Harlan D. Harris

"Data Scientist" and other titles

Feb 13, 2011 · 3 min read · data science job titles statistics ·

Neil Saunders has an interesting (to me) blog post up this morning, with the title “Dumped on by data scientists.” He uses the use of “data scientist” in a Chronicle of Higher Ed article to rant a little bit about the term. For Neil, it’s redundant, as the act of doing science necessarily requires data; it’s insulting, …

how to speak ggplot2 like a native, and Predictive Analytics World

Oct 24, 2010 · 2 min read · ggplot2 meetup R ·

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I was recently given the opportunity to re-present my ggplot2 talk, which I originally gave to the NYC R Meetup, to the DC R Meetup group. The Meetup was held co-located with the Predictive Analytics World conference in Alexandria, VA. (More on my thoughts on PAW below…) Contentwise, I made only small changes, changing …

Prediction with Multilevel Regression Models, and Pizza

Oct 15, 2010 · 3 min read · meetup statistics R ·

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The Meetup phenomenon, which is now substantial and longstanding enough to be more of a cultural change than a flash in the pan, continues to impress me. Even more so than tools like LinkedIn, Meetups have changed the nature of professional networking, making it more informal, diverse, and decentralized. Last night, …

Smartphones, MP3 players, and Bluetooth: the division of labor

Mar 27, 2010 · 4 min read · bluetooth gadgets mp3 phones smartphones ·

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As more and more people get smartphones that can play MP3s or streamed music, like the iPhone or Android phone like the upcoming HTC Evo 4G (I’m gettin’ one!), fewer and fewer people are buying standalone MP3 players. Why have two gadgets when you can have just one? But I think there are good reasons to do so, but I …

ggplot and concepts -- what's right, and what's wrong

Mar 7, 2010 · 6 min read · ggplot2 graphics programming R ·

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A few months back I gave a presentation to the NYC R Meetup. (R is a statistical programming language. If this means nothing to you, feel free to stop reading now.) The presentation was on ggplot2, a popular package for generating graphs of data and statistics. In the talk (which you can see here, including both my …

Savory and sweet, pears and beets

Oct 23, 2009 · 2 min read · cooking club csa dessert food recipes ·

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Hah, it rhymes! The fall haul (hah!) from the CSA inevitably means two things, root vegetables and ungodly numbers of pears. I love root vegetables, but tend to find pears to be pale imitations of apples. But when poached in red wine, or cooked with butter and sugar, pears can have some redeeming value. Recently, for …

Online publishing, micropayments, and warm fuzzy feelings

Oct 20, 2009 · 3 min read · internet journalism microeconomics money ·

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The problem of how to monetize online publishing, particularly news publishing, is neither new nor all that surprising. But the ongoing lack of a solution is steadily eating into news organizations across the country. Yesterday, the Times announced it was going to buy out or lay off 8% of its newsroom staff, despite …