Who is a Citizen Data Scientist?

When I saw the term at first, I wondered too.  In part part because of the 'scientist' part.    Does this assume the particular 'method' we know, or does it just mean more casual use?   Its usually also a  journalist as well, because they want to leverage some piece with it.   Not sure I agree that everyone is talking about it, unless you are the target of such a piece.   Does it require open data science?

Who, Who, Who…Are You Citizen Data Scientist?   By Mike Gualtieri, Vice President, Principal Analyst,   Forrester

Ugh. Everyone is talking about the citizen data scientist, but no one can define it (perhaps they know   one when they see one). Here goes. The simplest definition of a citizen data scientist is: non-data scientist. That’s not a pejorative. It just means that citizen data scientists nobly desire to do data science but are not formally schooled in all the ins and outs of the data science lifecycle. For example, a citizen data scientist may be quite savvy about what enterprise data is likely to be important to create a model but may not know the difference between GBM, random forester, and SVM. Those algorithms are data scientist geek to many of them. The citizen data scientist’s job is not data science. Rather they use it as a tool to get their job done.  Here is my definition of the enterprise citizen data scientist:

A business person who aspires to use data science techniques such as machine learning to discover new insights and create predictive models to improve business outcomes.  ..... " 

Short Summary of Smoothing Algorithms

In OpenDataScience.   A technical piece, but the descriptions are worthwhile to understand the why  as well.  Via O'Reilly.

Open Data Science in the Enterprise

From O'Reilly:

5 tips for embracing open data science in the enterprise

Transform the way you approach analytics. By Alice LaPlante

 Download the free ebook Breaking Data Science Open, a new ebook by leading figures at Continuum Analytics that discusses the open data science ecosystem in depth. ... "

Global Impact of Open Data

Free EBook from O'Reilly. 

The Global Impact of Open Data
Key Findings from Detailed Case Studies Around the World

Open data has spurred economic innovation, social transformation, and fresh forms of political and government accountability in recent years, but few people understand how open data works. This comprehensive report, developed with support from Omidyar Network, presents detailed case studies of open data projects throughout the world, along with in-depth analysis of what works and what doesn’t.   ... " 

Random Walks for Time Series Forecasting

Nicely done, fairly gentle.

A Gentle Introduction to the Random Walk for Times Series Forecasting with Python   by Jason Brownlee on January 20, 2017 in Time Series

How do you know if your time series problem is predictable?

This is a difficult question with time series forecasting. There is a tool called a random walk that can help you understand the predictability of your time series forecast problem.

In this tutorial, you will discover the random walk and its properties in Python.
After completing this tutorial, you will know:

What the random walk is and how to create one from scratch in Python.
How to analyze the properties of a random walk and recognize when a time series is and is not a random walk.
How to make predictions for a random walk.  .... " 

What is Blockchain and Why is it Important?

Good piece with graphical descriptions and links.

In Open Data Science:

What is the Blockchain and Why is it So Important?
" ... Simply put, the Blockchain is a shared single version of the truth of anything digital. It is a database technology, a distributed ledger that maintains and ever growing list of data records, which are decentralised and impossible to tamper with. The data records, which can be a Bitcoin transaction or a smart contract or anything else for that matter, are combined in so-called blocks. In order to add these blocks to the distributed ledger, the data needs to be validated by 51% of all the computers within the network that have access to the Blockchain.  .... " 

How to Build a Slack Bot

I was intrigued by the idea of constructing an 'intelligent' bot in Slack.    Have used Slack already for some time., Here is a nicely done example.  Using a Python API.   Programming skill required, but you can get the idea.   Its about gathering public data, extracting the right parts, performing simple logic, publishing the results back to Slack.  Pretty straightforward.  Intelligence?   No, but a repetitive way to program a simple service on data in a known system.   Leveraging social infrastructure can create Bots.

There is even a Slack data science community.

Set Diversity Optimization

A topic not often distinctly mentioned, but it is an element of many problems.  Should get more attention.  In Open Data Science.   Contains a number of good business examples.   A broad definition of decision success.  Might be a good idea to always think of problems this way so that measures used and solutions are thought of in the same way.  Technical:

" ... Consider the following problem: for a number of items U = {x_1, …x_n} pick a small set of them X = {x_i1, x_i2, ..., x_ik} such that there is a high probability one of the x in X is a “success.” By success I mean some standard business outcome such as making a sale (in the sense of any of: propensity, appetency, up selling, and uplift modeling), clicking an advertisement, adding an account, finding a new medicine, or learning something useful.   .... "