fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Reconciling the Differences in Our Data: A Mixed-Methods Research Story
By: Caryn Kieszling
Tags: Research And Insight, Design, UX, Data Science, Microsoft

We all love it when the quant and qual align, but what about those other times, when they seem at odds? For example: the surveys are in, the clickstream data has been analyzed, and you’re feeling confident. Then as you compare notes with your teammates, you realize that the recommended next steps based on UX research and data science are poised to send the business in two very different directions.

This was the challenge we found ourselves working to resolve as a user researcher and data scientist with Customer Insights Research supporting the same product team at Microsoft. What seemed like a conflict ended up leading us to deeper insights, a closer working relationship, and a better outcome for our customers—but getting there was a multi-step process.

Step 1. Confront your data discrepancy

Our product team was sunsetting the older version of an app in favor of one that provides accessibility for all users. To help our stakeholders understand what our customers needed in the new version, researchers had conducted user studies, interviews, and surveys as well as analyzing in-app feedback. Caryn, a researcher, was listening to what our customers were saying: they told us too many of the features they enjoyed in the older app were missing from the new app.

The user research recommendation, based on this analysis? Fill the feature gaps from the older app or customers will not transition over.

Meanwhile, Sera, a data scientist, conducted a cohort analysis with clickstream data to understand what our customers were doing in the older version of the app and how that impacted their transition to the new version. Based on the qualitative feedback, she expected to see customers who used features only available in the older app abandoning the new app. But the analysis showed that they weren’t.

The data science recommendation at this stage? Since customer retention in the new app doesn’t correlate with feature use in the older app, focus on other vital parts of the user journey to help people transition.

Research and data science had arrived at opposing suggestions. Now what?

Step 2. Resist the urge to champion your own data

At this stage, it could have been easy to each double down on our opposing viewpoints. If we’d presented the results, asking our general program manager to choose between recommendations, at least one of us would have the satisfaction of knowing we influenced the product. But how could our stakeholders and leaders be confident they were making the best data-driven decision, if we forced them to choose between quant and qual?

In a way, mixed-methods research is an exercise in getting comfortable with conflict and finding reconciliation instead of a “winner.” Happily, we each realized this and resisted the urge to champion our own perspective. We asked for the time we needed to investigate further, and our product team accommodated.
Scraping A to Z of Amazon using Scrapy
By: Rohan Goel
Tags: NLP, Scrapy, Data Science, Amazon, Web Scraping

Scrapy is a fast, open-source web crawling framework written in Python, used to extract the data from the web page with the help of selectors based on XPath.

In this article, We will be looking at how we can use Scrapy to scrape all the Amazon Product Reviews using just its URL and automatically store all the scraped data into a JSON file within seconds.
@RequestParam vs @QueryParam vs @PathVariable vs @PathParam
By: Mahdi Razavi
Tags: Spring, Java

The annotations @RequestParam, @QueryParam and @PathVariable, PathParam are used to read values ​​from the request. But which one is used for what?

The arrangement in the collection is deliberately grouped, as these are annotations that have the same task but come from different frameworks that often occur in combination.

comparison

As shown in the table, the difference lies in where a value is read out. @PathParam reads the value from a path part of the called URI. @QueryParam is used to read the values ​​from QueryParameters of a URI call. These are after? listed in a URI.

PathParams are location-dependent, while QueryParams are passed as a key value pair and therefore their order is irrelevant to more than one QueryParam.

example

As an example again both calls in a URI:

@PathVariable

This annotation is used on the method parameter we want to populate:

@RequestMapping(value = "/orders/{id}", method = RequestMethod.GET)

@ResponseBody

public String getOrder(@PathVariable final String id) {

return "Order ID: " + id;

}

Even though @PathVariable and @RequestParam are both used to extract values from the URL, their usage is largely determined by how a site is designed.

The @PathVariable annotation is used for data passed in the URI (e.g. RESTful web services) while @RequestParam is used to extract the data found in query parameters.

Refrence

http://www.nullpointer.at/2017/11/22/requestparam-queryparam-pathvariable-pathparam/

Related Links

https://docs.oracle.com/javaee/7/api/javax/ws/rs/PathParam.html

https://docs.oracle.com/javaee/7/api/javax/ws/rs/QueryParam.html

https://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/javadoc-api/org/springframework/web/bind/annotation/PathVariable.html

https://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/javadoc-api/org/springframework/web/bind/annotation/RequestParam.html
Chalkboard Thoughts — Dec 15, 2020 — Episode 4 —Fear & Doubt
By: Michael De Groot
Tags: Storytelling, Shareyourstory, Blackboardthoughts, Stayingaliveuk, Whiteboardanimation

I’ve written often about ‘Fear & Doubt’. Those two words came to me, when I was listening to an audible book during 2019, titled, ‘The Art of Happiness’ by The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. For me it’s in this place, the place of ‘Fear & Doubt’ where all suffering in our conditioned human minds starts. If we were only able to master this mental feat then we would be saved from those demons (see picture above) that roam around in our minds.
The Mayans’ Lost Guide To Doing Data Science In Fast Paced Startups
By: Saurav Agarwal
Tags: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Startups, Data Science, Product Management

The quest is what are those key practices left unsaid while working in a fast and highly chaotic environment? Are the AI foundations and computer science degrees enough to make scalable models in real life? It’s not as easy as eating cotton candy.

Driven by intellectual progress, I decided to do a review of my past experience in working with Machine Learning and Deep Learning models. In this article, I’ll be using my work experience on one of my recent projects where the aim was to predict a user’s purchasing probability for our various offerings. The purpose of this project was to help the Performance Marketing and Growth Team at HealthifyMe to evaluate their efficacy and efficiency of our sales engines respectively. I am sharing below the insights I’ve had from the same on what one needs to strive towards while solving data problems:
Due Diligence
By: Mike Essig
Tags: Poetry, Consciousness, Dreams, Fear, Psychology

Bobby Chiu

We limn the darkness as best we can,

trying to shine light into corners

where the scariest monsters await.

Such shining demands deft courage.

Shaky hands hold the illuminating torch.

Fear is a wise and constant companion.

The darkest corners are in the mind.

Some monsters despise the light.

Look hard, but be wary what you loose.
How to Impress With Your First Impression
By: Jordan Gross
Tags: Motivation, Communication, Life Lessons, Relationships, Inspiration

How to Impress With Your First Impression

Be “you-centric”

Photo by Hồ Ngọc Hải on Unsplash

“You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” My soccer coach first presented this phrase to our team when we were 16-years old. He delivered an inspiring speech about how college coaches were going to start coming to our games, and we had to put on our best performance each time they came, because we never knew who would be watching. We may have opportunities to impress these coaches again, but we would not have a second chance at making a first impression.

As my search for playing college soccer heightened, after playing in front of coaches, the next step was to meet them in person. Coaches would invite you to their university for the day, and you would have what is considered an unofficial visit to their campus. Before my first visit, I remembered having a meeting with my own coach, in which he further explained the importance of this first impression. But this time, he went into detail about how to make this first impression flawless.

First impressions in relationships are quite important. People make snap judgments about your appearance, your body language, your posture, your tone, and of course your words. Whether it’s meeting new colleagues for the first time, going on a first date, meeting your significant others’ friends and family or meeting a college coach, it’s crucial to understand what goes into making a positive first impression. The following are some tips my coach shared with me that I always remember when I meet people.
A Kind Manifesto
By: Disabled Saints
Tags: Self, Education, Mental Health, Kindness

Photo by Sandrachile . on Unsplash

I believe in kindness. My faith in kindness is unlike the way people generally debate atheism. Is there a supreme being or not? Kindness does not float on an invisible realm like in some Platonic world of forms. Kindness exists only insofar as people are kind to one another.

My belief in kindness relates to its use. I trust in the ability of kind actions to change lives, organizations, and even the world. Maybe that sounds naive these days. Everything feels cruel and indifferent — wars, terrorism, environmental degradation, politics, economics, social media, refugee crises, racism, family life, and healthcare. Kindness seems to be in short supply.

I’m guessing, though, that you experience several acts of kindness every day. I do. These acts of kindness often go unnoticed, but they exist nonetheless. A hug from a loved one. Someone holding the elevator. A thank you from a coworker. Although kindness rarely shows itself on the same scale as cruelty, these kind deeds can add up to something substantial.

Kind acts can change the course of our day and our lives. Small acts such as genuine words of encouragement aren’t so small. I know more than one person who did not commit suicide because of the kindness of someone simply willing to listen for a few minutes.

I don’t know what would tools or methods we could use in order to measure kindness. How could anyone tally all of the kind acts done in a day? We could not calculate the total time given to kindness? There’s no practical way to create a Gross Kindness Quotient, and determining the magnitude of a single kind act would be impossible.

Kindness takes countess forms. In The Power of Kindness, Piero Ferrucci, describes 18 categories of kind acts. Some — like forgiveness, empathy, and generosity — are obvious. He suggests that we also show kindness in less apparent behaviors such as through honesty, respect, and flexibility.

You might compile your own classifications of kind deeds, and I would add that tone is essential to kindness. We all know a kind tone when we hear it, and tone can make a world of difference. Consider honesty. By itself, honesty is not necessarily kind. Someone can be truthful in a vicious and spiteful way. A kind tone makes the truth palatable, and a kind tenor begins with intention. If we want to practice kindness, we have to work at it.
Seek Out One of These to Find the Missing Answer to Your Goals
By: Tim Denning
Tags: Life Lessons, Self Improvement, Life, Learning, Productivity

What Is a Proper Mastermind?

It’s all in the title. A mastermind is a way to join multiple minds together to create something greater than any individual part.

I often tell people my writing is a collaboration and it’s true. Behind the scenes are other writers, entrepreneurs, publication owners, editors, superfans and web developers who all contribute in some way to my work.

A mastermind helps you find the right people. Because there are people all over the internet and the screening process will take the rest of your life.

Here are the features of a proper mastermind.

Heavy curation

Anyone can join a Facebook Group, but not everyone can join a mastermind.

Filtering the noise in your life helps you reach mastery. The people who form a mastermind are normally curated down from a bigger list. A mastermind is typically made up of less than 100 people. (The best ones I’ve seen contain thirty or less.)

Every trait of the people who join is taken into consideration.

Application process

There is an application process via a Google Form that requires you to talk about yourself in detail. You note down your goals, your experience, what you do for work. Everything about you is put under a microscope and up for debate by the owner and members of the mastermind.

The point of the application process is not to discriminate but to ensure that the right mix of people with similar interests are put together.

There is a mastermind for everybody. You just have to find the right one for you.

It costs money

A mastermind is serious. It costs money. My mentor’s mastermind is thousands of dollars every year to join. I initially thought it was a huge waste of money until I attended. Only then did I appreciate the power of curation and the price tag that comes with it.

You don’t appreciate something that is free.

The more money you have to give up, the more you’ll take the mastermind seriously.

It’s run by someone who cares

The leader of the mastermind is important. If their goal is only to further their own interests, then the mastermind will typically die a slow death.

The point of a mastermind is for everybody to grow together. There is no supreme leader that everybody worships. My mentor who runs a mastermind is obsessed with the members.

He does the best he can every week to serve their interests. Most of all, he celebrates the wins of people in the mastermind, which shows others what is possible so they too can have their moment.

There is one thing everybody has in common

The mastermind I’m in is full of writers. We all have similar goals: to write better, to write more, to touch people’s hearts with emotion, to inspire others, to earn a living from writing.

A common theme is what makes a mastermind great. Find your tribe by thinking about your interests.
Ruta de Aprendizaje Machine Learning en Español — Parte 2
By: German Andres Jejen Cortes
Tags: Gradiente, Backpropagation, Python, Learning Path, Machine Learning Ai

Written by

Data Scientist | DataEngineer | Software Developer | Electronic Engineer. I’m Jesus’s Follower | Don’t hesitate to AMA. Let’s take a coffee ☕ and enjoy life.
What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Write
By: Daniel P. Donovan
Tags: Writers On Writing, Copywriting, Writing, Writer, Writing Tips

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Write

You can’t always can’t on the muse to be there

Photo by Ryan Snaadt on Unsplash

As a writer, staring at a blank screen kinda sucks.

You rack your brain trying to come up with ideas, but there’s nothing there. Somehow, you’ve forgotten everything you know.

And the more you try, the harder it gets.

It’s funny. Some days, the material’s right at the forefront of your thoughts, begging to be written about.

But then there are other days when the muse just simply isn’t there.

What do you do then?

How do you write something when you have no idea what to write about?

I struggled with this question for a long time.

Often, I would sit in front of my computer and stare off into space, hoping something would come to me.

Alas, nothing ever did.

It was only when I started typing that the juices started flowing.

Take this article, for example.

Here I am, sitting in front of my computer with no idea what to write, thinking to myself “this sucks.” So what do I do, I write exactly that — “As a writer, staring at a blank screen kinda sucks.”

And with that one line, I was off to the races. The rest flowed like hot molten lava down a beautiful Hawaiian hill.

So when you’re struggling to find something to write about…

JUST START WRITING.

Write about how you feel. Write about hating the blank screen. Write about cursing the muse for never showing up.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that your fingers start moving.

Because once they do, the rest starts flowing pretty quick.
What are encryption keys and how do they work? 🔐
By: Dominic Fraser
Tags: Encryption, Software Engineering, Security, Cipher, End To End Encryption

Diffie-Hellman-Merkle key exchange

This method allows two parties to remotely establish a shared secret (a key in our case) over an assumed insecure channel. This key can then be used in subsequent communications along with a symmetric-key algorithm.

Colours are generally used instead of numbers when explaining this, due to the correlation of undoing the mathematical operations being used to the complexity of knowing which two colours where mixed to create a new, third, colour.

Diffie-Hellman-Merkle protocol to establish a shared secret key

Alice and Bob each start with their own, private, values R and G, as well as a public common value Y. Alice uses Y along with her private value to create RY, and Bob GY. These are publicly shared. This is safe, as it is extremely computationally difficult to determine the exact private values from these new values. Alice can then use Bob’s new public combination along with her private value to create RGY, and importantly Bob can use Alice’s new public combination to create the exact same RGY value. They now have a shared secret they can use to encrypt future messages and know the other can decrypt them when received.

A main security flaw in this protocol is the inability to verify the authenticity of the other party while setting up this shared secret. It is assumed you are talking to a trusted other party. This leaves the protocol open to a ‘man-in-the-middle’ attack by someone listening in from the start of the exchange.

Eve performing a man-in-the-middle attack

Above it can be seen how the Eve effectively eavesdrops and intercepts the exchange to set themselves up in the position to read any message shared between Alice and Bob. Eve can receive a message from Alice, decrypt it using their shared secret key, read it, then re-encrypt it using the key Eve shares with Bob. When Bob receives the message it can be decrypted using his secret key, which he incorrectly assumes he shares with Alice.

We will come back to Diffie-Hellman-Merkle later, but now will look at solving this vulnerability using public-private key pairs.
Going With the Flow. “It’s radical knowing that on a…
By: Kiran Gandhi
Tags: Storytelling, Marathon, Feminism

Mile 1

I got my flow the morning of the London Marathon and it was extremely painful. It would be my first marathon and I remember already feeling so nervous for it. I had spent a full year enthusiastically training hard, but I had never actually practiced running on my period.

I thought through my options. Running 26.2 miles with a wad of cotton material wedged between my legs just seemed so absurd. Plus they say chaffing is a real thing. I honestly didn’t know what to do. I knew that I was lucky to have access to tampons etc, to be part of a society that at least has a norm around periods. I could definitely choose to participate in this norm at the expense of my own comfort and just deal with it quietly.

But then I thought…

If there’s one person society can’t eff with, it’s a marathon runner. You can’t tell a marathoner to clean themselves up, or to prioritize the comfort of others. On the marathon course, I could choose whether or not I wanted to participate in this norm of shaming.

I decided to just take some midol, hope I wouldn’t cramp, bleed freely and just run.

A marathon in itself is a centuries old symbolic act. Why not use it as a means to draw light to my sisters who don’t have access to tampons and, despite cramping and pain, hide it away like it doesn’t exist?

Mile 6
Hiring Software Developers in a Competitive Market
Tags: Hiring, Disrupthrct, People, Talent, Software Development

Hiring Software Developers in a Competitive Market

Danté Nel at DisruptHR CPT 12.10.2017

There is a certain mentality one needs to have when hiring software developers in a competitive market. Most companies require technical skills, but supply has outstripped demand — software developers can afford to be picky when multiple companies approach them for a job. Danté speaks about the change in mindset required when you as an individual hiring manager at your company realises the fierceness of competition from other players in the market.

For instance, 60% of developers will have at least 2 companies interviewing them within 1 week on the job market. This jumps to 71% in the second week, while popular ‘devs’ easily get more than 10 companies asking them for interviews. Danté gives some pro-tips on how to “win” — making better technical assessments, applying empathy in the hiring process, etc.

Watch the video:
A First Look at React’s New Server Components
By: Louis Petrik
Tags: Reactjs, React, JavaScript, Web Development, Nodejs

A First Look at React’s New Server Components

Explaining the new approach to fetching data in React.js.

Yesterday, the React team announced a new feature: Server Components.

The feature is still experimental; there is no real documentation yet.

What it’s about is simply put: data & component fetching in React.js.

Server Components allow us to load components from the backend. The components have already been rendered in the backend and can be seamlessly integrated into the running app.

So it’s a bit like server-side rendering but works differently.

Similar to what you know from Next.js with getInitialProps, server components can fetch data and pass it to front-end components.

However, unlike classic SSR, Server Components are a bit more dynamic. We can fetch a server tree during the app's execution; the client state is not lost.

They also work differently technically. With SSR, our JavaScript code is rendered into HTML on the server. This creates an HTML template, which is the visible part of our web page.

This is sent to the client, plus the JavaScript code used for interactivity. Thanks to SSR, we see something earlier, but the interactivity can be delayed.

Server components are dynamically included in the app and passed in a special form, as shown in the following image.

All JavaScript instructions are executed. 1 + 1 becomes 2, which is also passed in the format. The components are static and cannot be interactive. Compared to SSR, only the visible part is passed — the interactivity is missing.

Where is the big advantage of Server Components?

Zero-Bundle-Size-Components

The JavaScript world is full of huge libraries. Just think of packages like Moment.js, which are many kilobytes in size, but of which we only use a few functions.

For the app's performance, and thus for the user, this is, of course, very bad — all the code is shipped to the front-end.

Tree-shaking can be used to save code that we don’t need. What remains is still a lot of code, which is often executed only once. For example, to format a date.

Thanks to Server Components, we can spare our front-end this code as well.
Getting Started With FastAPI
By: Abhishek Bose
Tags: Fastapi, Python, Api Development, Rest Api

Rest APIs are beautiful pieces of software that enable applications to communicate with a database or with other software very effectively.

The kind of operations which you can perform are as follows are GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, TRACE, etc. The GET method is generally used for fetching some information from the backend. For example, if an app (web/phone) wants to fetch some information from the database, it will use the GET method. POST is used for creating new information. PUT is used for updating already existing records. DELETE, as the name suggests is used for the deletion of records in a database. The TRACE method is used for debugging purposes and used for checking what is received on the other end when a request is invoked.

Since ages FLASK has been the most famous python framework for creating REST services. It is easy to use and deploy and can be used effectively for creating production-grade microservices.

FLASK has its own set of disadvantages though. It is not suitable for large applications. No admin site support. Does not provide any authentication mechanism. Lacks the powerful ORM tool which allows CRUD operations with any database.

Recently, some extremely good men out there have come up with brand new framework for Python to mitigate the issues mentioned above, called FastAPI

The makers and users of this framework claim that the APIs created from FastAPI are literally very fast. As fast as Node and Go based Rest APIs.

The official FastAPI website has multiple testimonials from developers working in major tech firms proving the effectiveness of this framework.

Without much ado let’s go ahead and write a few APIs using this brand new framework and see it in action.

Use pip to install fastapi and uvicorn as shown in fig 1 below. Uvicorn is ASGI server which we will be using for production.
What Compels Us to Write
By: Selali Onuoha
Tags: Innovation, Self, Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Writing

What Compels Us to Write

Answering The Call

Photo credit: RetroSupply in UnSplash

I have always been drawn to the written word. Like most writers, I am a voracious consumer of books.

I read for information on most days because my day job demands it. My most content state is whenever I have a book in my hand. The pleasure that I get from soaking into a beautifully told story is immense.

Probably also like most writers, I have always felt a calling to join the guild. Growing up where I did, the title of ‘Writer’ failed to make the list of viable ways of making a living.

In my late teens, I was introduced to the world of black fiction writers. I revelled in the worlds created by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Ayi Kwei Armah and Chinua Achebe.

It took until my early twenties to discover the works of black, female writers. For reasons not limited to an under-representation of minority works in the publishing world and less-developed supply chains in developing countries, I was late to the party.

But, what a stroke of luck!

Being late to the party meant that I had loads of catching up to do. I devoured as many books as I could as quickly as I could — and I haven’t stopped since.

Half of A Yellow Sun

Girl, Woman, Other

How Long Til Black Future Month

The Colour Purple

The Bluest Eye

Parable of The Sower

…the list is wonderfully endless!
Building a Question Answering System
By: Tristan Ratz
Tags: Machine Learning, Question Answering, Python, NLP, Squad

First we compare our question to each and every document in the used dataset and determine the 20 most likely documents to contain the answer.

Secondly we put all the paragraphs of these 20 documents together and, again, comparing those with the question and determine 20 paragraphs to likely contain the answer.

Lastly we take BERT (the model by google) and try to extract an answer for every paragraph and select the answer in which the confidence score is highest — the answer where the model is most certain to have found the right answer.

The first two steps are called retrieval and the last one reading.

For comparing documents or paragraphs to our question we build vectors on our question as well as every paragraph and document. Then we put every vector in a large vector room and determine the similarity between the vectors and the question vector by calculating the angle between those vectors via the cosine similarity.

But why does this work?

Because these vectors and their direction represent different features: They can indicate which words or which meaning/content a given text has. For example one direction can mean baseball and another natural language processing. „Machine learning“, for example, would definitely be more similar to „NLP“ than „baseball“.

We choose those documents/paragraphs for the next step which have the highest similarity.

For the reading part we took a pre-trained multi-lingual model by google and trained it to answer questions on the english wikipedia. As previous studies have shown the cross learning effects to other languages are significant. So we can answer questions in multiple languages.

Conclusion

As a result we can answer questions on a given database in multiple languages. The results were quite promising. It works more accurate and is even faster than existing solutions (like cdQA by PNB Paribas).

But while delivering promising results, our solution faces some challenges. In a customer facing situation one had to reduce the number of false positives to (almost) zero, because giving a false answer to a customer could have economical importance.

To accomplish this, there are different approaches. For example:

- Intern beta testing, to see which answers get asked in support,

- pre screening, to let the customer see only the right answers,

- using the model only monolingual,

- and of course training on questions specific to the given datasets.

It is an exciting development and promising path, that we, thanks to Serviceware and TU Darmstadt, were able to explore. We were astonished how far we could get in merely three months. Probably because of the good support of Serviceware and their amazing team.

A special thanks to Niklas and Adrian, as well as Luisa.

And of course to Ji Yune Whang, Joshua Bodemann, Marcel Nawrath, Sebastian Marcus Meier and Wladislav Miretski — we really have been a great team.
A Silent Storm
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Poetry, Confusion, Anger, Conflict, Desperation

A Silent Storm

Conflicted, or torn?

( Photo by Patrick Gillespie on Unsplash)

The fight is constant;

Inside my mind, I scream.

I rage.

Stop talking!

It’s always the same;

You expect me to agree.

You desperately try to sway me.

I cannot.

I will not.

You hate;

You criticize and demonize.

What has this world done to you?

To create this un-caged bitterness?

I cannot fathom.

But I nod, I shrug.

I silently hope you will just stop talking.

Just, stop.

Go to sleep, leave me in peace.

Oh, if only I could go back.

I would tell myself: no!

Walk away!

Is it too late?
IBM Cognos Analytics + Watson Studio Cloud: Better Together
By: Hafsah Lakhany
Tags: Machine Learning, Watson Studio, Announcements, Business Intelligence, Data Science

IBM Watson Studio Cloud empowers data science teams to cleanse data, build and deploy AI models on the fully managed IBM Cloud. Cognos Analytics is IBM’s premier business intelligence solution for sharing actionable insights across your organization.

It’s our pleasure to announce the release of the Cognos Analytics and Watson Studio Cloud Integration. Cognos Analytics on Cloud and Watson Studio on Cloud now work better together. We’re connecting Cognos Analytics users to Jupyter notebooks in Watson Studio Cloud. Watson Studio also offers a suite of additional data science capability including AutoAI, access to GPU’s and SPSS Modeler.

Why integrate?

We’ve been hearing a lot of feedback from our business analytics and data science communities around pain points that data scientists and business analysts encounter. Namely, data science and BI teams are often siloed in a way that makes it difficult to access a single version of the truth. With this integration, we aim to provide data science and BI teams a single ecosystem to make the most of your organization’s data.

How does it work?

The integration between the two offerings serves as a bridge to empower data scientists and business analysts to collaborate on the cloud. Our first release supports ETL and data shaping use cases and future releases will include embedding capabilities. Data scientists can easily script against governed Cognos data in Watson Studio and share results back into their Cognos ecosystem.

For step by step instructions, check out our code pattern that walks you through an examination of credit risk-related data using Watson Studio and Cognos Analytics.

IBM Watson Studio helps data scientists and analysts prepare data and build models at scale across any cloud. Get started building models for free with Watson Studio on Cloud Pak for Data as a Service.
How to Deploy Java Library on Maven Github Packages
By: Miftahun Najat
Tags: Apache Maven, Github Package, Java, Github

Easy read, easy understanding. A good writing is a writing that can be understood in easy ways

Follow
The art of saying “NO”
By: Madhav Bahl
Tags: Personal Development, Personal Growth, Time Management, Efficiency, Productivity

Method 2: Defer The Request

By postponing the event and holding the other person accountable for follow up, you can test how serious they are about it

I feel that there is nothing wrong with a direct “No”, but sometimes deferring the request can prove to be more clever and advantageous,

By putting off the request by weeks/months, and making the other person accountable for a quick follow up, you can find out who all are actually serious about the purpose. Let me give you my own example,

I receive a lot of requests to speak in college events, and majorly my calendar on weekends remains filled with events, so whenever I get a new request, I have to put it off by at least 2–3 weeks (Not by choice, since my calendar doesn’t accommodate it),

But, by doing so, I find that less than 20% of the organizers/people follow up.

The reasons might vary, they might have found another speaker, or they might have forgotten, but it gives me a very clear sense of who all were actually serious about having me as a speaker.

The whole point here is that this method gives you a clear sense of whether or not you should give your time. (But the method is not recommended for urgent requests).

How to do it?

Simple, just tell them in a polite way that you are occupied right now but you will be free after a definite amount of time, and tell them to follow up after that period of time.

A simple example —
Five Reasons to Get to the Mountains NOW
By: Heidi K. Isern
Tags: Lifestyle, Life Lessons, Coping, Mental Health, Outdoors

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.” -John Muir

As soon as we approached Auburn on the I80 and saw the Sierra mountains in the distance, something happened.The stress that had been gripping my brain released its clamming hold. The loneliness that had threatened my heart vanished. And that pit inside my stomach? I looked at the opening sky, took a sip of water, and digested it.

“We’re going to the mountains,” I told my daughter in the back.

“We are? Do you like it there, Mommy? Do you like mountains?”

“I do, love,” I said. “I do. And I think you might too.”

I didn’t just didn’t like it. I needed it. For 16 years California’s peaks and its wild ocean have been my saviors when city life got too jittery. I hiked, skied, and surfed across the state each weekend. And now, kid in tow, I needed respite from the pandemic and non stop NPR.

Unfortunately, other residents of the Bay Area had the same idea. But we ignored the crowds downtown and popular parks, and went out to secluded trails and played. Beaten paths weren’t our thing.

If you can brave the drive and do the due diligence to find uncrowded spaces, I encourage all of you to escape to nature.

Whether it’s the surf at Bolinas or the foothills of the Sierras, here are 5 reasons to get outside.

You feel insignificant compared to the towering peaks (or if near the ocean, the crashing waves). This means your problems are insignificant. You are in a different place, which forces a different frame of mind. People are nice to each other and band together. No, not the tourists, the locals. If you get off beaten paths into local areas and homes you’ll realize there’s a different, more wholesome way of living. They bake their own bread in non covid time. Nature’s beauty will astound you. The dire news on NPR will fade you see what the universe can create and replenish. You will be more determined to help preserve it. Cell phone service doesn’t work. If you go far enough out, you lose connection. And this, by far, is one of the greatest gifts. Even if for a few hours, focusing on the trees instead of your iPhone screen is better than any anti-anxiety medication.

“I like the mountains, Mommy,” said my daughter on our drive back.

“We will return soon, “ I told her.

Get outside. Go to the mountains. Heal your soul. Make a better world.
a sonnet on self-pity
By: James Khan
Tags: Depression, Poetry, No Crime In Rhymin, Sonnet, Mental Health

This paean of pity is getting quite boring

with cliché of rowing-boats slipping their mooring

and candles extinguished with love as a shadow-

sabemos que la guerra cansa al soldado.

The pestilent pathos increasing the drama

increases the aspect of pain’s panorama,

assault on the psyche, disease of the soma,

the sarx bearing marks of a soul’s haematoma.

There’s nothing to gain in the drain of compassion

when loathing is loud and self-hatred in fashion,

the lesions are lessons in life’s understanding

to build up the character, knowledge expanding.

These scars aren’t the herald of failure’s arrival

but potent reminders of strength and survival.
Progressive web apps(PWAs) are coming to a Safari near you
By: Prathik S Shetty
Tags: Mobile App Development, Progressive Web App, Mobile, Web Development, Html5

Safari is finally adding PWA features.

For those of you who have no clue what a PWA is or are confused about how to begin developing a PWA or dont know about it’s importance please read this post on PWA before you proceed.

Safari/Webkit has finally started adding features that constitute a PWA. Before we proceed its important for us to understand what features constitute a PWA. At the core of it only three

Web App Manifest Service Worker Cache API

These are the must have PWA features. PWAs are web apps that can be added to homescreen. And it works like a app when opened from homescreen without the browser window. You may ask what’s works like a app. In any native app when you open the app, the shell is always available. It may also show you last time’s data when offline or when loading. In traditional web apps you see a white screen then HTML loads and if it was a SPA(single page application) the js loads which makes ajax calls and then loads data.

By making optimal caching strategy, you can eliminate the initial white page. But here you are at the mercy of the browsers Overall Cache size/limit. One way to overcome this was the offline cache manifest. This was a very cumbersome way to achieve the above. Thankfully it’s deprecated.

At the starting of last year support for PWA looked like this
How to Have a Successful UX Career at Google (Or Anywhere Else)
By: Jhilmil Jain
Tags: Opinion, Design, UX, Career Advice

Learn how to “speak shark”

I am a huge fan of the reality TV show Shark Tank. For those not familiar, the basic premise is that entrepreneurs come out and pitch their business or product ideas to an audience of seasoned, successful businesspeople— the Sharks. Sharks grill the “guppies,” asking them detailed questions about how they’ll take their products to market, how they’ll make money, what their sales projections will be, and so on. Sharks then make offers to invest, so entrepreneurs get knowledgeable investors, Sharks get equity, and everyone wins. Or, quite often, everyone loses.

The antics of this entrepreneurial pressure-cooker are entertaining, but the show also demonstrates that business acumen and product savviness go a long way when trying to sell your ideas. The more knowledgeable and business-smart an entrepreneur is, the better they do under questioning. It’s an immensely valuable skill. I call this “speaking shark.” It means thinking like a CEO.

Fully understanding the product area you’re working in is one of the best ways UXers can position themselves as experts, united in true partnerships with both cross-functional teams and their end users. It’s not enough to just do product research, like competitive analyses or market surveys. You are the expert on the user, and that means understanding the full landscape in which your users exist. To get the lay of the land, read industry news, and understand where that industry and competitors are going. The goal is to build a POV on the product and business.

As a manager, encourage your team to think about the following prompts:

What business are you in? What problem are we solving?

For whom? Why?

How do we compete? What is our differentiator?

How do we make money?

What is the growth strategy? What are the ecosystem risks?

Upping your vocabulary and understanding of basic business and product terminology is another fairly simple way of being able to speak shark. Get familiar with business metrics like KPI, sales revenue, net profit margin, gross margin, customer lifetime value, and product metrics like daily/monthly active users (DAU, MAU), churn rate, conversion rate, engagement etc.

The type of product you work on — subscription vs. content sites vs. API products vs. e-commerce — will determine the metrics you gather. Regardless, as a design leader, you have to be able to understand the product and business metrics to be able to demonstrate how UX drives business value.
New Year, New Ewww
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Humor, Depression, New Years Resolutions, Mental Health, Comics

Written by

Daily comic by Lisa Burdige and John Hazard about balancing life, love and kids in the gig economy.
Here is what you need to do to get more stuff done…
Tags: Self Improvement, Motivation, Work, Focus, Life

Here is what you need to do to get more stuff done… Mo Follow Dec 21 · 3 min read

Photo from Unsplash

We all sometimes struggle with staying focused on our tasks: work, studies, revision, and other things besides. This can mean not getting enough done during the day.

Here are a few things, from personal experience, that you can do, to help you focus on whatever you are doing throughout your day.

Always keep the end goal in mind.

When you have a lack of focus or discipline, or you are not really enthusiastic about what you are doing, a good place to start is to remind yourself why you started working in the first place.

Do you want to pass a test with flying colors? Do you want to ace an interview? Do you want to grow your business?

Whatever your end goal is, keep that in mind, because this will give you the determination and the focus that you need to carry on.

Be organized: Set up a timetable and a to-do list.

Another reason for lack of focus is that you just don’t know what you are supposed to be doing. This is attributed to a lack of organization, and so this is why you need to have both a to-do list and a timetable.

The to-do list is where you put tasks that you need to complete, and also when you need to complete them.

The timetable is where you fit the tasks on your to-do list into your day so that you are organized for the day ahead.

Give yourself a break in between tasks.

A big reason that you may lack focus may be that, because you have been working for a few hours, you are just too tired to focus properly on your work.

So, remember to give yourself 10–20 minute breaks, to recharge your batteries, so that you can go back to your tasks rejuvenated and energized.

Have a good night’s sleep.

This is very important. Have an early night, and get the sleep that you need, so that you do not feel tired in the morning.

The morning is the most productive part of the day, and so feeling tired from the night before will hinder how much work you get done in this crucial time.

This brings us neatly to the final point…

Start your day with an effective morning routine.

A productive morning is an essential part of a productive day. Doing the same few things in the morning before you start your day can really help you stay focused for the day ahead.

It primes your brain for the work ahead, and it is a good way to get focused on the tasks that you need to complete.

I hope that you will use these tips to be more focused so that you can get more done during the day.

If you have got to this point in the article, please take the time to follow me for more pieces about studying, motivation, and life. Thank you.
New Sight
By: Shannon Mastromonico
Tags: Free Verse, Poetry, Writing, Spiritual, Micro Poetry

A poetry publication brought to you by Assemblage to capture all of your disconnected thoughts and let them find their form.

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[Paper] 3D-CNN+LSTM: Deep Neural Networks for No-Reference (Video Quality Assessment)
By: Sik-Ho Tsang
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Quality Assessment, Lstm, Vqa, Deep Learning

Downscaling of the video can be used rather than the above procedure for generating the training data, however, downscaling can definitely affect quality perception of image/video, e.g., small distortions can become imperceptible after being downscaled.

On the other hand, keeping the original video resolution when applying 3D-CNN in VQM creates tremendous amount of memory requirement. This is one of the difference between the VQA task and image classification task.

Another issue with applying deep learning models in VQA lies in the amount of training data. By the above process, sufficient amount of data is generated for training deep neural networks with large number of parameters.
7 Over Sampling techniques to handle Imbalanced Data
By: Satyam Kumar
Tags: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Imbalanced Data, Education, Data Science

7 Over Sampling techniques to handle Imbalanced Data

Deep dive analysis of various oversampling techniques

Image by LTD EHU from Pixabay

Modeling imbalanced data is the major challenge that we face when we train a model. For dealing with the classification problems the class balance of the target class label plays an important role in modeling. For imbalance class problems i.e presence of minority class in the dataset, the models try to learn only the majority class and result in biased prediction.

Some of the famous examples of imbalanced class problems are:

Credit Card Fraud Detection Disease diagnosis Spam detection, and many more

The imbalance of the dataset needs to be handled before training a model. There are various techniques to handle class balance, some of them being Oversampling, Undersampling, or a combination of both. This article will cover a deep dive explanation of 7 techniques of oversampling:

Random Over Sampling Smote BorderLine Smote KMeans Smote SVM Smote ADASYN Smote-NC

For the evaluation of different oversampling models, we are using the Churn modeling dataset from Kaggle.

Performace of the Logistic Regression model without using any oversampling or undersampling technique.

1. Random Over Sampling:

Random oversampling is the simplest oversampling technique to balance the imbalanced nature of the dataset. It balances the data by replicating the minority class samples. This does not cause any loss of information, but the dataset is prone to overfitting as the same information is copied.
Original 5 Haiku Series #5
By: Audrey Malone
Tags: Poerty, Haiku, Writing, Poetry On Medium, Creative Writing

Get in Touch

Audrey Malone is a freelance writer, professional resume writer, and editor, including editor for Medium publication, ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR.

She’s also the owner and founder of ExpertResumeWritingServices.com, and founder of Medium Publication, Acne Free Skin Care Magic.

Feel free to join her Acne Free Skin Care Magic Mailing List for a Free Acne Treatment Ebook.

You may also join her Free Writing Course Mailing List for writing tips on how to improve your writing to become a top writer.