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Jasper McChesney
Jasper McChesney

1.7K Followers

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You should summarize data with the geometric mean

As an information designer, I’m charged with summarizing data. But even the simplest of questions, like “How big is a typical case?” presents choices about what to do; about what kind of summary to use. An “average” is supposed to describe something like a typical case, or the “central tendency”…

Data Science

15 min read

Why you should summarize your data with the geometric mean
Why you should summarize your data with the geometric mean
Data Science

15 min read


Mar 22

Substack Is Where It’s At (For Me)

Medium has become the place for a certain kind of writer. Someone who trumpets Silicon Valley, basically, and everything tech and hustle and chatGPT. I suppose there will continue to be a big audience for that here. But I’m mostly not interested. If you, too, are skeptical, maybe check out substack and some of the great authors there. Predictably, my first post is still about board games — though also culture and technology. See you there.

Technology

1 min read

Technology

1 min read


Nov 10, 2022

Trends in Board Game Mechanics

An Analysis of BoardGameGeek Data — Introduction Sophisticated “Euro” boardgames are a big hobby these days, and a far cry from old Uno and Monopoly. Often more like economic simulations, these modern board games demand parsing many complex choices, and efficiently using resources, usually to amass “victory points” before the end. But Euros aren’t static: they’ve changed…

Board Games

6 min read

Trends in Board Game Mechanics
Trends in Board Game Mechanics
Board Games

6 min read


Published in CodeX

·Jun 18, 2022

You’re Telling Me This Is Data Science?

Misconceptions About Working In Data — Data work is a stable, respectable professional field, with pretty decent pay in exchange for staring at a glowing box much of each day. But before you dive in, be realistic about what it isn’t. Things you might think, and the reality… “I’ll do a bootcamp and some Kaggle competitions, and then I’ll be a data scientist!” No one will hire you. Those two-week training…

Data Science

3 min read

You’re Telling Me This Is Data Science?
You’re Telling Me This Is Data Science?
Data Science

3 min read


Jan 20, 2022

Amazing Things I’ve Heard in Interviews I’ve Failed

I actually haven’t interviewed that many times. I feel like half the time I get the job, and the other half of the time it’s a horrendous situation I’ve been lucky to dodge. Well, this post is about that second half. The things interviewers say… 1. Loyal employees never leave. I drove to the nearest…

Jobs

3 min read

Amazing Things I’ve Heard in Interviews I’ve Failed
Amazing Things I’ve Heard in Interviews I’ve Failed
Jobs

3 min read


Published in Towards Data Science

·Mar 25, 2021

Six Skills for Data Work — It’s Not All Technical

Go Beyond Coding To Be Useful And Employed — People obsess over what bootcamps to join, the hottest ML algorithms, and which SaaS products to use. But the technicalities of data science/analysis are just one piece of the work. I would list at least these six skills: Back-End Coding. This is handling the pipelines of data, i.e. the data…

Data Science

3 min read

Six Skills for Data Work — It’s Not All Technical
Six Skills for Data Work — It’s Not All Technical
Data Science

3 min read


Mar 22, 2021

The Value of Simplicity
283
7

Erik Engheim

Nice write-up of this position, Erik. I'm of the same persuasion.

Nice write-up of this position, Erik. I'm of the same persuasion. I've seen the same thing in the R world, between different dialects. I even wrote a piece comparing one approach (the “tidyverse”) to a kitchen full of gadgets — v. using a chef knife (data.table). I also saw something similar when I worked in graphic design. There were tool people, who loved add-ons for Photoshop that would save them 10 seconds each, but cost them 2 hours to update and implement in total; versus the people who would just wing it with the tools included, and not worry.

1 min read

1 min read


Mar 16, 2021

Dashboards are Dead
8.8K
86

Taylor Brownlow

Are dashboards dead? Kind of. Which I think makes them undead.

Are dashboards dead? Kind of. Which I think makes them undead. No, they're not dead: because people keep asking for them, and other people keep making them. Yes, they're dead, because they rarely get used: most dashbaords are requested, made, published, and then never accessed again. Users love the idea of dashboards: that they'll have control, and can get all kinds of insights. But most data are too complex to understand without analysis -- more than you cna do in an interactive dash. So to answer any serious question, you're back to ad-hoc reporting. Which is fine. Dashboards have their uses -- it's just far fewer uses than we sometimes imagine.

1 min read

1 min read


Published in Excursions

·Feb 10, 2021

The Fantasy Class Mixer

A Generic Class System for Fantasy Games — Flexibility with constraints. That’s what I find fun and to generate the most creative ideas. So I’ve created a generic system for fantasy classes. (Just remember, half the fun of old D&D games was making your character!) Each character has three slots to use, assigning each a class archetype from…

Fantasy

2 min read

Fantasy Class Mixer
Fantasy Class Mixer
Fantasy

2 min read


Published in Towards Data Science

·Oct 26, 2020

Overwhelmed by R? Start Slow

A First Lesson in R Commands For the Non-Programmer — If you haven’t done a lot of programming, learning R can be pretty intimidating. But it’s easier if you focus on fundamentals, and slowly build up your skills through practice. Here I’ll give a short lesson on the most basic things you can do in R. This post is adapted…

R

4 min read

Overwhelmed by R? Start Slow
Overwhelmed by R? Start Slow
R

4 min read

Jasper McChesney

Jasper McChesney

1.7K Followers

Data, graphics, games. So You Need to Learn R.

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