Tag: Harder

As a data engineer, I always feel less confident about the quality of data I handle than the quality of code I write. Code, at least, I can run it interactively and write tests before deploying to production. Data, I most often have to wait for it to flow through the system and be used to encounter ...

Today, a reader of mine asked me if I could show him how to be more ‘anti-fragile.’ The idea was introduced by Nicholas Taleb in his book of the same name. It refers to the process of not only withstanding adversity but actually thriving and improving in the face of challenges. ...

My thigh muscles ache as I run up the cobblestoned ramp-like street leading to Jaffa Gate. I pass through the historic walls, breached for the visit of German Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898. I speed past the Citadel and down the narrow alleyways of the Armenian Quarter on my way to Zion Gate. I am runnin...

Outliers are individuals that are very different from the majority of the population. Traditionally, among practitioners there is a certain mistrust in outliers, this is why ad-hoc measures such as removing them from the dataset are often adopted. However, when working with real data, outliers ar...