Business on Harlan D. Harris

A/B Testing and Product Ratings, Part 1: Delays and Bias

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 22 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Suppose you’re a data scientist at an e-commerce web site that sells shoes, responsible for supporting A/B tests. Many A/B tests are easy, and there are a number of companies that sell tools that make the easy cases as simple as clicking a few buttons and looking at pretty graphs. But A/B tests can get statistically complex surprisingly quickly, which is why hiring data scientists with a strong statistics background can make a big difference in the quality of decisions.

Thoughts on Managing Data Science Team Workstreams (and a Shiny app)

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post was originally published on Medium

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There are different types of data scientists, with different backgrounds and career paths. With Sean Murphy and Marck Vaisman, I wrote an article about this for O’Reilly a few years back, based on survey research we’d done. Download a copy, if you haven’t read it. This idea is now pretty well established, but I want to talk about a related issue, which is that the type of workthat Data Science teams do varies a lot, and that managing those types of work can be an interesting challenge.

Building a Complementary Data Science Team

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post was originally published on Medium

I’m the Director of Data Science at EAB, a firm that provides best-practices research and enterprise software for colleges and universities. My team is responsible for the predictive models and other advanced analytics that are part of the Student Success Collaborative product that’s used by academic advisors and other campus leadership. We’re hiring data scientists, and I wanted to publicly say a few things about the roles we have advertised. (Note that EAB is part of a public company and is in a competitive market, so there are obviously things I’m not saying!)

Inauthenticity

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

View this post on X (HarlanH)

Let me unpack that a bit…

Hugh and Crye t-shirt

Recently, Hugh & Crye, a DC-based clothing firm for men, with a novel take on sizing, recently did a Kickstarter campaign for their new line of fitted t-shirts. What the hell? H&C has been around for about 5 years, and based on their product growth and hiring seems to be doing quite well. I like their stuff. Why do they need a Kickstarter? The original goal of Kickstarter was to “kickstart” new products by providing crowdsourced seed funding so that you (you!) can ensure that a great idea gets off the ground. And if a project doesn’t make its goals, no harm done, and no money wasted. A fantastic example is the Oculus Rift, which was a Kickstarted Virtual Reality rig, and is now a subsidiary of Facebook. Kickstarting a project is a rather labor-intensive alternative to trying to get a bank loan, or maxing out your credit cards, but with much less risk. It’s a very community-driven, authentic way of getting support for a new venture, moving it from the prototype phase to the initial manufacturing round.