Georgetown B-school Talk 2021

calculation | consulting
data science leadership
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charles@calculationconsulting.com

calculation|consulting
Data Science Leadership
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charles@caclulationconsulting.com

calculation | consulting data science leadership
Who Are We?
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Dr. Charles H. Martin, PhD
University of Chicago, Chemical Physics
NSF Fellow in Theoretical Chemistry
Over 10 years experience in applied Machine Learning
Developed ML algos for Demand Media; the first $1B IPO since Google
Lean Start Ups: Aardvark (acquired by Google), eHow,
Wall Street: GLG, BGI, BlackRock
Fortune 500: Roche, France Telecom
Tech / Retail: GoDaddy, eBay, Walmart
Investment: Griffin Advisors, Page Family Offices 
www.calculationconsulting.com
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Recent AI News: Epic Systems
When machine learning FAILS
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Recent AI News: Epic Systems
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“[The] definition of sepsis based on
billing codes alone is imprecise and not
the one that is clinically meaningful to a
health system or to patients.”
When machine learning FAILS

Recent AI News: Zillow
When machine learning (or AI) FAILS
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Recent AI News: Zillow
When machine learning (or AI) FAILS
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Data Science is Different
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Data Science Leadership : Becoming Data-Led
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1. Data Informed: OperationalVisibility
2. Data Driven: Tooling and Insights for Growth
3. Data Led Automation and Innovation
creating the data-led organization

Data Science Leadership : 4 Steps to Leading
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• Strategy: How can you leverage data ?
• Stage: How mature is your data ?
• Team: What team do we need ?
• Tools: What tools do they need ?
creating the data-led organization

Strategy:Algo Gas Station Analogy
Problem: where to open a gas station ?
Need: good traffic, weak competition
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less competitors
no traffic
sweet spot
great traffic
too many competitors
ML algorithms can predict supply and demand
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Strategy: Data Science Process
• Acquire Domain Knowledge
• Formulate Hypothesis
• Generate Model(s) from the Data
• Predict Revenue Gains
• Backtest Predictions on your Data
• A/B Test in Production
• Attribute Gains to Model(s)
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acting
solving
framing
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• Systems Thinking: leveraging the inter-relationships
between data, marketing, and the customer
• Knowledge Transfer: mentoring — not training — to
develop both personal mastery and team learning
• Mental Models: create a base of small-scale models for
thinking about how to use your data
• Knowledge Sharing: foster collaboration between
research, engineering, and product to drive revenue
Strategy: Learning from Data
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• Cross-functional engineering, product, marketing, finance
• Autonomous: separate from the traditional engineering
product lifecycle. self-organizing and self-managing
• Experimental: form hypothesis, analyze data, make
predictions, run backtests, A/B testing
• Self-sustaining: not a cost center; generates revenue
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Strategy: Data Science is not IT

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Problem: Externalities
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external factors can change

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Data is only is as accurate as it’s original intent demanded
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Stage: Your Data Maturity
• Where is your data ? Transaction Database? Web Logs ?
3rd party system ? Data Lake ?
• What product does it service ? Billing ? CRM ?
• Can you access it ? Security ? Regulations ?
• Who owns it ? Responsible for quality ?

Problem: Data Quality Mismatch
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?

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Recommender System

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Recommender System
Quality of product metadata
May not materially impact billing
x
? wrong
missing

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“Only the paranoid survive” Andy Grove (Intel)
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Recommender System
Solution: Be Paranoid and Test Everything

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“Only the paranoid survive” Andy Grove (Intel)
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Recommender System
Solution: Test Everything
Software engineers can be paranoid about programming.
In fact, Paranoid Programming is a thing.
You have to be paranoid about your data.
Thing is, bad code can usually be fixed.
But bad data has usually has to be thrown away

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Recommender System

Problem: Data Contraband
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data 'from a friend’ that may violate compliance
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Recommender System
Data pulled into
spreadsheet / csv
Data actually stored in DB Data passed around
by email, etc

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Recommender System
Google Sheets, SAP, etc
(where you can track everything)
Move functions to the data
(stored procedures, Spark, etc)
Jira, GitHub, Confluence, .
Document tracking systems
Solutions: Data Contraband

Team: Data Scientists are Different
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not all techies are the same

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theoretical physics
machine learning / AI specialist
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applied physics
data scientist
engineer
software, browser tech, dev ops, …

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Data science group. Can be very isolated.
Very research-y & difficult to productionalize
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Embedded data scientist, solves problems
builds solutions, and deploys them
Software and IT services
Great at managing code and systems
Not great with data, math — or ambiguity

FANNG Managers: Fallen Gods
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the Earth is flat and they fallen off

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FAANG infrastructure is 10-20 years ahead

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you need infrastructure to deliver data products

Data Strategy : Think like a Beginner
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cultivate a beginner’s mind
- Test your assumptions. Literally
- Look for problems early on. And never stop looking
- Distinguish between statistical structural outliers.
- Repair your data, if possible.
- Start with simple, robust methods.
- Sophisticated models are more sensitive to
errors
- and are more easily overtrained.
- Evaluate your predictions on real data, and figure
out how to attribute results to your models.
- Re-calibrate your models if necessary.

Tools: What the Team Needs
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• Infrastructure: Data storage, cloud services, etc
• Analytics: Measuring whats going on
• Operations: Keeping things running
• Machine Learning and AI: Growth and Innovation
Algorithms, not data lakes, generate revenue
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Tools: What the Team Needs to Know
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• Metrics: What KPIs you have, and what to hit
• Access: How to get what they need (i.e self-service)
• Impact: How tooling (used and built) support the business
• Truth: What data is reliable, what is not
Algorithms, not data lakes, generate revenue
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Final Thoughts: Algorithmic Accountability
An asset is an economic resource.
Anything tangible or intangible that is capable of
being owned or controlled to produce value and
that is held to have positive economic value is
considered an asset.
algorithms can be valuable assets
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Algorithmic Accountability
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does revenue depends on hidden algos ?
• WebMD Google SEO
• Amazon Product Listing Algo
• Pinterest Relevance Algo
• Twitter Spam filter
• Apple App Store Rankings

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do decisions depend on hidden factors ?
A 'Crisis' in Online Ads: One-Third of Traffic Is Bogus
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304026304579453253860786362
Now Algorithms Are DecidingWhomTo Hire…
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2015/03/23/394827451/now-algorithms-are-deciding-whom-to-hire-based-on-voice
What you don’t know about Internet algorithms is hurting you…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/03/23/what-you-dont-know-about-internet-algorithms-is-hurting-you-and-you-probably-dont-know-very-much/

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Solution: Algorithmic Transparency
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can you be transparent and not be gamed ?
http://fortune.com/2015/03/18/how-do-you-govern-a-hidden-fluid-and-amoral-algorithm/
83% of the participants in the study changed their behavior
once they knew about the algorithm
How do you govern a (hidden, fluid and amoral) algorithm?
participants mistakenly believed that their friends intentionally
chose not to show them stories

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Do you depend on some else’s marketplace?
How does your revenue depend on algos?
Do you need an internal algo ?
Who will manage it? build it? maintain it?
algorithms have unforeseen liabilities
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Georgetown B-school Talk 2021

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Georgetown B-school Talk 2021