Shows / Data Skeptic
Data Skeptic
The Data Skeptic Podcast features interviews and discussion of topics related to data science, statistics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and the like, all from the perspective of applying critical thinking and the scientific method to evaluate the veracity of claims and efficacy of approaches.
Episodes
- Data Skeptic
The Model Complexity Myth
There's an old adage which says you cannot fit a model which has more parameters than you have data. While this is often the case, it's not a universal truth…
Data Skeptic[MINI] Distance Measures
There are many occasions in which one might want to know the distance or similarity between two things, for which the means of calculating that distance is not…
- Data Skeptic
ContentMine
ContentMine is a project which provides the tools and workflow to convert scientific literature into machine readable and machine interpretable data in order…
Data Skeptic[MINI] Structured and Unstructured Data
Today's mini-episode explains the distinction between structured and unstructured data, and debates which of these categories best describe recipes.
- Data Skeptic
Measuring the Influence of Fashion Designers
Yusan Lin shares her research on using data science to explore the fashion industry in this episode. She has applied techniques from data mining, natural…
Data Skeptic[MINI] PageRank
PageRank is the algorithm most famous for being one of the original innovations that made Google stand out as a search engine. It was defined in the classic…
- Data Skeptic
Data Science at Work in LA County
In this episode, Benjamin Uminsky enlightens us about some of the ways the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk leverages data science and…
Data Skeptic[MINI] k-Nearest Neighbors
This episode explores the k-nearest neighbors algorithm which is an unsupervised, non-parametric method that can be used for both classification and…
Data SkepticCrypto
How do people think rationally about small probability events? What is the optimal statistical process by which one can update their beliefs in light of new…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] MapReduce
This mini-episode is a high level explanation of the basic idea behind MapReduce, which is a fundamental concept in big data. The origin of the idea comes from…
- Data Skeptic
Genetically Engineered Food and Trends in Herbicide Usage
The Credible Hulk joins me in this episode to discuss a recent blog post he wrote about glyphosate and the data about how it's introduction changed the…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] The Curse of Dimensionality
More features are not always better! With an increasing number of features to consider, machine learning algorithms suffer from the curse of dimensionality, as…
- Data Skeptic
Video Game Analytics
This episode discusses video game analytics with guest Anders Drachen. The way in which people get access to games and the opportunity for game designers to…
Data Skeptic[MINI] Anscombe's Quartet
This mini-episode discusses Anscombe's Quartet, a series of four datasets which are clearly very different but share some similar statistical properties with…
Data SkepticProposing Annoyance Mining
A recent episode of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe included a slight rant by Dr. Novella and the rouges about a shortcoming in operating systems. This…
- Data Skeptic
Preserving History at Cyark
Elizabeth Lee from CyArk joins us in this episode to share stories of the work done capturing important historical sites digitally. CyArk is a non-profit…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] A Critical Examination of a Study of Marriage by Political Affiliation
Linhda and Kyle review a New York Times article titled How Your Hometown Affects Your Chances of Marriage. This article explores research about what correlates…
- Data Skeptic
Detecting Cheating in Chess
With the advent of algorithms capable of beating highly ranked chess players, the temptation to cheat has emmerged as a potential threat to the integrity of…
Data Skeptic[MINI] z-scores
This week's episode dicusses z-scores, also known as standard score. This score describes the distance (in standard deviations) that an observation is away…
Data SkepticUsing Data to Help Those in Crisis
This week Noelle Sio Saldana discusses her volunteer work at Crisis Text Line - a 24/7 service that connects anyone with crisis counselors. In the episode we…
- Data Skeptic
The Ghost in the MP3
Have you ever wondered what is lost when you compress a song into an MP3? This week's guest Ryan Maguire did more than that. He worked on software to issolate…
Data SkepticData Fest 2015
This episode contains converage of the 2015 Data Fest hosted at UCLA. Data Fest is an analysis competition that gives teams of students 48 hours to explore a…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Cornbread and Overdispersion
For our 50th episode we enduldge a bit by cooking Linhda's previously mentioned "healthy" cornbread. This leads to a discussion of the statistical topic of…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Natural Language Processing
This episode overviews some of the fundamental concepts of natural language processing including stemming, n-grams, part of speech tagging, and th bag of words…
- Data Skeptic
Computer-based Personality Judgments
Guest Youyou Wu discuses the work she and her collaborators did to measure the accuracy of computer based personality judgments. Using Facebook "like" data…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Markov Chain Monte Carlo
This episode explores how going wine testing could teach us about using markov chain monte carlo (mcmc).
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Markov Chains
This episode introduces the idea of a Markov Chain. A Markov Chain has a set of states describing a particular system, and a probability of moving from one…
- Data Skeptic
Oceanography and Data Science
Nicole Goebel joins us this week to share her experiences in oceanography studying phytoplankton and other aspects of the ocean and how data plays a role in…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Ordinary Least Squares Regression
This episode explores Ordinary Least Squares or OLS - a method for finding a good fit which describes a given dataset.
- Data Skeptic
NYC Speed Camera Analysis with Tim Schmeier
New York State approved the use of automated speed cameras within a specific range of schools. Tim Schmeier did an analysis of publically available data…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] k-means clustering
The k-means clustering algorithm is an algorithm that computes a deterministic label for a given "k" number of clusters from an n-dimensional datset. This…
- Data Skeptic
Shadow Profiles on Social Networks
Emre Sarigol joins me this week to discuss his paper Online Privacy as a Collective Phenomenon. This paper studies data collected from social networks and how…
Data Skeptic[MINI] The Chi-Squared Test
The Chi-Squared test is a methodology for hypothesis testing. When one has categorical data, in the form of frequency counts or observations (e.g. Vegetarian…
- Data Skeptic
Mapping Reddit Topics with Randy Olson
My quest this week is noteworthy a.i. researcher Randy Olson who joins me to share his work creating the Reddit World Map - a visualization that illuminates…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Partially Observable State Spaces
When dealing with dynamic systems that are potentially undergoing constant change, its helpful to describe what "state" they are in. In many applications the…
- Data Skeptic
Easily Fooling Deep Neural Networks
My guest this week is Anh Nguyen, a PhD student at the University of Wyoming working in the Evolving AI lab. The episode discusses the paper Deep Neural…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Data Provenance
This episode introduces a high level discussion on the topic of Data Provenance, with more MINI episodes to follow to get into specific topics. Thanks to…
- Data Skeptic
Doubtful News, Geology, Investigating Paranormal Groups, and Thinking Scientifically with Sharon Hill
I had the change to speak with well known Sharon Hill (@idoubtit) for the first episode of 2015. We discuss a number of interesting topics including the…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Belief in Santa
In this quick holiday episode, we touch on how one would approach modeling the statistical distribution over the probability of belief in Santa Claus given age.
- Data Skeptic
Economic Modeling and Prediction, Charitable Giving, and a Follow Up with Peter Backus
Economist Peter Backus joins me in this episode to discuss a few interesting topics. You may recall Linhda and I previously discussed his paper "The Girlfriend…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] The Battle of the Sexes
Love and Data is the continued theme in this mini-episode as we discuss the game theory example of The Battle of the Sexes. In this textbook example, a couple…
- Data Skeptic
The Science of Online Data at Plenty of Fish with Thomas Levi
Can algorithms help you find love? Many happy couples successfully brought together via online dating websites show us that data science can help you find…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] The Girlfriend Equation
Economist Peter Backus put forward "The Girlfriend Equation" while working on his PhD - a probabilistic model attempting to estimate the likelihood of him…
- Data Skeptic
The Secret and the Global Consciousness Project with Alex Boklin
I'm joined this week by Alex Boklin to explore the topic of magical thinking especially in the context of Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret", and the similarities it…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Monkeys on Typewriters
What is randomness? How can we determine if some results are randomly generated or not? Why are random numbers important to us in our everyday life? These…
- Data Skeptic
Mining the Social Web with Matthew Russell
This week's episode explores the possibilities of extracting novel insights from the many great social web APIs available. Matthew Russell's Mining the Social…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Is the Internet Secure?
This episode explores the basis of why we can trust encryption. Suprisingly, a discussion of looking up a word in the dictionary (binary search) and…
- Data Skeptic
Practicing and Communicating Data Science with Jeff Stanton
Jeff Stanton joins me in this episode to discuss his book An Introduction to Data Science, and some of the unique challenges and issues faced by someone doing…
Data Skeptic[MINI] The T-Test
The t-test is this week's mini-episode topic. The t-test is a statistical testing procedure used to determine if the mean of two datasets differs by a…
- Data Skeptic
Data Myths with Karl Mamer
This week I'm joined by Karl Mamer to discuss the data behind three well known urban legends. Did a large blackout in New York and surrounding areas result in…
- Data Skeptic
Contest Announcement
The Data Skeptic Podcast is launching a contest- not one of chance, but one of skill. Listeners are encouraged to put their data science skills to good use, or…
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Selection Bias
A discussion about conducting US presidential election polls helps frame a converation about selection bias.
Data Skeptic[MINI] Confidence Intervals
Commute times and BBQ invites help frame a discussion about the statistical concept of confidence intervals.
- Data Skeptic
[MINI] Value of Information
A discussion about getting ready in the morning, negotiating a used car purchase, and selecting the best AirBnB place to stay at help frame a conversation…
- Data Skeptic
Game Science Dice with Louis Zocchi
In this bonus episode, guest Louis Zocchi discusses his background in the gaming industry, specifically, how he became a manufacturer of dice designed to…
- Data Skeptic
Data Science at ZestFinance with Marick Sinay
Marick Sinay from ZestFianance is our guest this weel. This episode explores how data science techniques are applied in the financial world, specifically in…
Data Skeptic[MINI] Decision Tree Learning
Linhda and Kyle talk about Decision Tree Learning in this miniepisode. Decision Tree Learning is the algorithmic process of trying to generate an optimal…
- Data Skeptic
Jackson Pollock Authentication Analysis with Kate Jones-Smith
Our guest this week is Hamilton physics professor Kate Jones-Smith who joins us to discuss the evidence for the claim that drip paintings of Jackson Pollock…
Data Skeptic[MINI] Noise!!
Our topic for this week is "noise" as in signal vs. noise. This is not a signal processing discussions, but rather a brief introduction to how the work noise…
- Data Skeptic
Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia with Susan Gerbic
Our guest this week is Susan Gerbic. Susan is a skeptical activist involved in many activities, the one we focus on most in this episode is Guerrilla…