Math in Business

Cathy O'Neilmathbabe.org

Outline of talk

Outline of talk

What are the options?

Outline of talk

What are the cultural differences?

Outline of talk

What are the mathematical differences?

Outline of talk

Typical data scientist duties

Outline of talk

Ethics, and how to make theworld a better place

What are the options?

What are the options?

Working as an academic mathematician

What are the options?

Working at a government institution

What are the options?

Working as a quant in finance

What are the options?

Working as a data scientist

Cultural Differences

Cultural Differences

Feedback is slow in academics

Cultural Differences

Institutions are painfully bureaucratic

Cultural Differences

Finance firms are cut-throat

Cultural Differences

Startups are unstable

Cultural Differences

Outside academics, mathematicians have superpowers

Cultural Differences

Inside academics, you get more flexible hours

and summers off (!?)

Cultural Differences

Outside academics, you get rewarded for organizational skills

(punished within)

Cultural Differences

Academic freedom is awesomebut can come with insularity

Cultural Differences

You don't decide what to work onin business but the questions

can be really interesting

Cultural Differences

You can't share proprietary information with the outside world when you work

in business or for the government

Cultural Differences

On the other hand,sometimes you can and

it might make a difference

Cultural Differences

In business, more emphasis on shallower, short term results

Cultural Differences

On the other hand, you get much more feedback

Cultural Differences

As in research, you learn tools and apply them

Cultural Differences

You have to constantly be aware of the business context

(which can be good)

Mathematical Differences

Mathematical Differences

Quants in finance usually come frommath and physics, data scientists

come from stats and CS

Mathematical Differences

In academics the data is smallIn finance it’s mediumIn data science it’s big

Mathematical Differences

In finance signal is tinyIn data science it’s big

Mathematical Differences

Finance: time seriesMachine Learning: pile o’ data

Mathematical Differences

Seasonality really matters(not user attributes as much

as user behavior)

Mathematical Differences

In finance, can change frequencyof data to compress models -

but not in user modeling

Mathematical Differences

The concept of exponential decayof signal is sacrosanct in finance

Mathematical Differences

Thus online learning

Mathematical Differences

Bayesian priors (two versions):generalized smoothness assumptions

Mathematical Differences

Questions academics focus onseem weirdly specific

Mathematical Differences

Questions academics focus onseem weirdly specific

(no offense)

Mathematical Differences

Finance uses mostly linear regression for forecasting

(sometimes with trees)

Mathematical Differences

Machine learners have allsorts of cool models

(a question of accuracy)

Mathematical Differences

The hardest things to do probably have small signal

(or complicated relationships)

Typical data scientist duties

Typical data scientist duties

You spend time visualizing the datafor the sake of non-quants

• Reporting help

Typical data scientist duties

You spend time modeling(forecasting user behavior)

Typical data scientist duties

You spend time monitoringsignal versus noise

Typical data scientist duties

You spend time onbusiness development

How do I get a job like that?

How do I get a job like that?

Get a Ph.D.(establish your creativity)

How do I get a job like that?

Know your way around a computer(awk grep “rm –fr *”)

How do I get a job like that?

Learn python or R, MapReduce or pig

How do I get a job like that?

Get some domain knowledge (vocabulary)

How do I get a job like that?

Acquire some data visualization skills(knowing what is crucial)

How do I get a job like that?

Learn basic statistics

How do I get a job like that?

Read up on machine learning

How do I get a job like that?

Emphasize your communication skills and follow-through

How do I get a job like that?

Practice explaining what a confidence interval is

Ethics, and how to make theworld a better place

Other stuff

Data modeling is everywhere(good data modelers aren't)

Other stuff

Beware the authority of the inscrutable

Other stuff

Open source data, open source modeling

Other stuff

Modeler’s Hippocratic Oath

Other stuff

Meetups

Other stuff

Data hackathons

Other stuff

Data science for therest of us?