Podcasts Technology Datacast Episode 5: Applied Statistics in Data Science with Christopher Peters

Episode 5: Applied Statistics in Data Science with Christopher Peters

Published: Oct. 28, 2018, 2 a.m.

Show Notes:

  • (2:05) Chris recalled his Econometrics and Quantitative Economics study during his undergraduate days.
  • (4:14) Chris talked about his research work focus on oil and gas at the Center for Energy Studies at Louisiana State University.
  • (5:53) Chris gave some insights on how data science and econometrics can solve problems in the energy industry.
  • (7:51) Chris talked about his decision to pursue a Masters in Applied Statistics.
  • (9:02) Chris emphasized the importance of learning statistical theory. In particular, survival analysis is very similar to conversion rate analysis.
  • (10:28) Chris discussed his Master’s thesis work in analyzing the churn rate for Treehouse.
  • (12:05) Chris maintained his own website called Statwonk.
  • (13:18) Chris mentioned the popularity of count data on consumer products.
  • (14:40) Chris gave some recommendations for those who want to learn fundamental statistics: Think Stats, Think Bayes, Statistical Inference, and Statistical Intervals.
  • (16:20) Chris recalled how he got a job as the first data scientist at Treehouse.
  • (16:52) Chris described Treehouse CEO Ryan Carson as a “marketing genius.”
  • (18:34) Chris spotted the number one most challenging aspect for a data scientist within a business - translating technical jargon to comprehensible concepts.
  • (20:11) Chris recalled building a company dashboard from scratch for Treehouse.
  • (22:46) Chris shared the background overview of his next employer, Zapier.
  • (24:25) Chris shared his favorite things working as a data scientist as Zapier.
  • (32:07) Chris recalled building an AnamolyBot to keep track of Slack communication between Zapier team members.
  • (36:33) Chris talked about the open-source project he has been working on during his spare time.
  • (39:10) Chris gave advice for people who want to seek remote positions.
  • (42:20) Closing segments.

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