Hugo speaks with Yves Hilpisch about how data science is disrupting finance. Yves’ name is synonymous with Python for Finance and he is founder and managing partner of The Python Quants, a group focusing on the use of open source technologies for financial data science, artificial intelligence, algorithmic trading and computational finance. Why are banks such as Bank of America & JP Morgan adopting the open source data science ecosystem? What are the major sub-disciplines of Finance that data science is and can have a large impact in? How has the rise of data science changed the financial world and how the work is done and thought about? Stick around to find out.

Hugo speaks with Amber Thomas about data journalism, interactive visualization and data storytelling. Amber is a journalist-engineer at The Pudding, which is a collection of data-driven, visual essays. We’ll discuss the ins and outs of what it takes to tell interactive journalistic stories using data visualization and, in the process, we’ll find out what it takes to be successful at data journalism, the trade-off between being being a generalist and specialist and much more. We’ll explore these issues by focusing on several case studies, including a piece that Amber worked on late last year called “How far is too far? An analysis of driving times to abortion clinics in the US.”

What are the biggest challenges in Pharmaceuticals that data science can help to solve? How are data science and statistics generally embedded in organizations such as Pfizer? What aspects of the pharmaceutical business run the gamut of nonclinical statistics? Hugo speaks with Max Kuhn, a software engineer at RStudio who was previously Senior Director of Nonclinical Statistics at Pfizer Global R&D. Max was applying models in the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industries for over 18 years.

Hugo speaks with Derek Johnson, an epidemiologist with Doctors without Borders. Derek leverages statistical methods, experimental design and data scientific techniques to investigate the barriers impeding people from accessing health care in Lahe Township, Myanmar. If you thought data science was all machine learning, SQL databases and convolutional neural nets, this is gonna be a wild ride as to get the data for their baseline health assessments, Derek and his team ride motorcycles into villages in northern Myanmar for weeks on end to perform in person surveys, equipped with translators and pens and paper because they can’t be guaranteed of electricity. Derek also researches the factors associated with the transmission of hepatitis C between family members and has helped to conduct studies in Uganda, Nepal, and India. All this and more.

Hugo speaks with Alan Nichol about chatbots, conversational software and data science. Alan is co-founder and CTO of Rasa, who build open source machine learning tools for developers and product teams to expand bots beyond answering simple questions. Which verticals are conversational software currently having the biggest impact on? What are the biggest challenges facing the fields of chatbots and conversational software? What misapprehensions do we as a society have about these technologies that experts such as Alan would like to correct? And how can we all build chatbots and conversational software ourselves?

Taras Gorishnyy, Senior Analytics Manager at McKinsey and Head of Data Science at QuantumBlack, discusses the role of data science in management consulting, changing organizations through data science, and the evolution of data science over the past decade. The podcast explores the impact of data science across various industries and the 5 steps required to change organizations through data science. It also touches on the challenges of decision-making, the evolving landscape of data science teams, getting clients as a freelance data scientist, the challenges of organizational change in data analytics, the domain specificity of skills and knowledge, and the science of complexity and continuous learning in data science.

Omoju Miller, a Senior Machine Learning Data Scientist with Github, speaks with Hugo about the role of data science in product development at github, what it means to “use computation to build products to solve real-life decision making, practical challenges” and what building data products at github actually looks like. Machine learning has the power to automate so much of the drudgery around data science & software engineering, from automated code review to flagging security vulnerabilities in code, and from recommending repositories to contributors to matching issues with maintainers and contributors and identifying duplicate issues. And just in case that’s not enough, they'll discuss github as a platform for work, not just technical, and, as Omoju has called it, “a collaborative work environment centered around humans.”

What are best practices for organizing data science teams? Having data scientists distributed through companies or having a Centre of Excellence? What are the most important skills for data scientists? Is the ability to use the most sophisticated deep learning models more important than being able to make good powerpoint slides? Find out in this conversation with Jacqueline Nolis, a data science leader in the Seattle area with over a decade of experience. Jacqueline is currently running a consulting firm helping Fortune 500 companies with data science, machine learning, and AI. This interview is with Jacqueline Nolis, but at the time of recording, she went by Jonathan Nolis.  Links from the show  Jacqueline Nolis' website You're relying on data too much: making decisions worse, not better, by Jacqueline Nolis Hiring data scientists (part 1): what to look for in a candidate, by Jacqueline Nolis Jacqueline on Twitter For more, see our page here 

What are the biggest challenges currently facing data security and privacy? What does the GDPR mean for civilians, working data scientists and businesses around the world? Is data anonymization actually possible or a pipe dream? Find out in Hugo's conversation with Katharine Jarmul, a data scientist, consultant, educator and co-founder of KI protect, a company that provides real-time protection for your data infrastructure, data science and AI. Links from the show KI Protect, providing real-time protection for your data infrastructure. What is GDPR? The summary guide to GDPR compliance in the UK by Matt Burgess for Wired Apple's differential privacy approach For more, see our page here

Why are spreadsheets ubiquitous in data analytics, why are so many data scientists anti-spreadsheet? Join Jenny Bryan, a software engineer at RStudio & recovering biostatistician who takes special delight in eliminating the small agonies of data analysis, and Hugo to discover why spreadsheets are in fact necessary in data analytics and how spreadsheet workflows can be incorporated into more general data science flows in sustainable and healthy ways. Welcome to the future. Links from the show Best Practices for Using Google Sheets in Your Data Project Jenny Bryan's repository of scary Excel stories Sanesheets, a self-proclaimed > by Jenny Bryan DataCamp's first two free courses on spreadsheets