I’m not the person you asked, but here are some random, assorted examples of “structured data you want to learn something about”:
- data you’ve pulled from an API, such as stock history or weather data,
- banking records you want to analyze for patterns, trends, unauthorized transactions, etc
- your personal fitness data, such as workouts, distance, pace, etc
- your personal sleep patterns (data retrieved from a sleep tracking device),
- data you’ve pulled from an enterprise database at work — could be financial data, transactions, inventory, transit times, or anything else stored there that you might need to pull and analyze.
Here’s a personal example: I recently downloaded a publicly available dataset that came in the form of a 30 MB csv file. But instead of using commas to separate fields, it used the pipe character (‘|’). I used DuckDB to quickly read the data from the file. I could have actually queried the file directly using DuckDB SQL, but in my case I saved it to a local DuckDB database and queried it from there.
Chess and music are the gold standard for deliberate practice because they have been around for hundreds of years and have been studied long enough to have clear paths, techniques, and metrics to getting to certain levels of skill.
That said, even something like being a “first class lawyer” can be broken down into a collection of very specific skills that can be learned and practiced deliberately to improve one’s performance. And the early stages of learning in any field likely have many of these specific sub-skills that are obvious and not particularly difficult to learn.
For example, if you’re an aspiring trial lawyer, one very specific sub-skill to learn and practice deliberately is vocal intonation and projection in a courtroom environment. This is a basic, fundamental skill for that goal, and getting good at it by practicing deliberately will move you towards that goal.
Another, totally different, specific sub-skill to develop towards that goal might be learning and practicing how specifically to organize your reference material in such a way that you can access it within, say 10 seconds in front of the judge and jury. Another might be writing effective briefs and/or motions.
Even these examples can be broken down further into very specific sub-skills that can be deliberately practiced. After many, many years, you could have a collection of skills that make you a “first class trial lawyer”, similar to how had to learn and practice very specific sub-skills such as openings, end games, and effective use of each specific chess piece.
At the end of the day, each field consists of a large number of specific sub-skills that each contribute to the overall performance level of the individual.
Chess and music are the gold standard for deliberate practice because they have been around for hundreds of years and have been studied long enough to have clear paths, techniques, and metrics to getting to certain levels of skill.
That said, even something like being a “first class lawyer” can be broken down into a collection of very specific skills that can be learned and practiced deliberately to improve one’s performance. And the early stages of learning in any field likely have many of these specific sub-skills that are obvious and not particularly difficult to learn.
For example, if you’re an aspiring trial lawyer, one very specific sub-skill to learn and practice deliberately is vocal intonation and projection in a courtroom environment. This is a basic, fundamental skill for that goal, and getting good at it by practicing deliberately will move you towards that goal.
Another, totally different, specific sub-skill to develop towards that goal might be learning and practicing how specifically to organize your reference material in such a way that you can access it within, say 10 seconds in front of the judge and jury. Another might be writing effective briefs and/or motions.
Even these examples can be broken down further into very specific sub-skills that can be deliberately practiced.
After many, many years, you could have a collection of skills that make you a “first class trial lawyer”, similar to how had to learn and practice very specific sub-skills such as openings, end games, and effective use of each specific chess piece.
At the end of the day, each field consists of a large number of specific sub-skills that each contribute to the overall performance level of the individual.
Are there any resources you’d recommend to learn this? Or is this just something you have to learn through trial and error?
For context, I’m someone who has big blind spots in this area and trying to figure out how to overcome them. Typically, I just develop a set of internal “rules” or principles and then run everything through those rules/decision tree. I’ve been able to overcome a LOT of previous blind spots in this way.
The challenge is that few people are willing and/or able to articulate the principles involved. When I find a book or person who can and will explain the principles and patterns, I’m golden. If not, I’m lost at sea.
Any resources you could recommend would be greatly appreciated!
Your comment is interesting because it shows the dilemma posed to those of us who struggle to communicate positive intentions without unintentionally upsetting people.
On the one hand, there are people who would be offended by a reply of “s/wizen/wisen” _because_ they feel it’s low-effort, nitpicking, and/or talking over their heads (not everyone would even understand that comment, even on HN).
On the other hand, there’s many people like yourself and many commenters on the original article who feel that “padded” criticism is condescending.
The dilemma is that both the “Stick to the facts” group and the group who feels that “just the facts” is rude — feel strongly that they are right and everyone else should know that.
At least you’re willing to assess the intentions of the speaker rather than attacking. Unfortunately, not everyone will do that.
Perhaps the real takeaway is: there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to interacting with people.
Your feelings are definitely not unique. There’s a big thread in the article comments with a number of people expressing a similar view.
I think you’re right that the whole thing is difficult. There are certainly people who take offense at the constructive criticism being offered with no “softener”, and there are obviously others that take offense as the “softener” being added.
Perhaps the ultimate takeaway is what you stated:
> delivering respectful and constructive criticism involves knowing your audience.
You can also debug by putting each method on a separate line, which allows for debugging by commenting out individual methods one at a time. It enhances readability too.
Example:
(df.method1()
Can you give an example of what you mean by “meta programming” and “manual” in this context?
I use pandas regularly, but I’m not sure exactly what you mean here. I’m wondering if you’re referring to some techniques I’m not aware of that could be useful.
> the preface claims that “You don’t need to know calculus or linear algebra. You don’t need any prior knowledge of statistics”.
Downey makes this statement because his premise is that if you know Python, you can use that knowledge to learn the concepts without the pure math approach.
For example, he will do iteration to calculate integrals rather than teaching integration. And he will plot statistical distributions using a Python library to explore and teach the statistical concepts.
He also has a book called “Think Statistics” that is excellent in this regard.
- data you’ve pulled from an API, such as stock history or weather data,
- banking records you want to analyze for patterns, trends, unauthorized transactions, etc
- your personal fitness data, such as workouts, distance, pace, etc
- your personal sleep patterns (data retrieved from a sleep tracking device),
- data you’ve pulled from an enterprise database at work — could be financial data, transactions, inventory, transit times, or anything else stored there that you might need to pull and analyze.
Here’s a personal example: I recently downloaded a publicly available dataset that came in the form of a 30 MB csv file. But instead of using commas to separate fields, it used the pipe character (‘|’). I used DuckDB to quickly read the data from the file. I could have actually queried the file directly using DuckDB SQL, but in my case I saved it to a local DuckDB database and queried it from there.
Hope that helps.