NYC Data #326: Suspicious data patterns in elections, Subway Origin-Destination Ridership Data, Center for Family Support, Office of Emergency Management, Causal Questions in Product Analytics
Hi friends: it’s August! I’m sending a letter 2 weeks in a row because there’s been a spate of news and job postings, despite it being the middle of summer. I hope you’re all able to get some relaxation time in!
As always, help me keep this space up-to-date: please send me posts, events, and job openings. [image credit: Peter Borghard]
Good Local Posts
Vikram Oberoi of citymeetings.nyc fame wrote about figuring out where people's talking points come from with LLMs. Seems very promising. I’m a huge fan of this project generally and excited to see where it goes!
I know I posted to Andrew Gelman’s blog in the last letter, but the recent post on suspicious data pattern in the recent Venezuelan election and less obvious ones in the recent Iranian election were too good not to share. The Venezuelan case seems pretty likely (though the scenario in the PPS seems plausible), while the Iranian case is just curious.
The MTA just released the Subway Origin-Destination Ridership dataset. Built using ‘Destination Inference’, it includes a key piece of information that I’ve been waiting for for a long time!
Upcoming In-Person Events (new listings in bold)
8/6: AWS AI Bootcamp: Fine-Tune and Host SLMs (Llama3 or Mistral)
8/13: Practical applications of Generative AI: building a chatbot answering questions
8/14: Building Agentic RAG and Scaling Vector Search
8/15: GenAI, LLMs and ML Meetup
8/21: Hybrid Chatbots: Merging LLMs and Classification Models
Open Roles
Squarespace is hiring a Manager, Marketing Channel Analytics & Operations. We’re looking for someone strong in MMM / Attribution and knows the MarTech space well. This role has a lot of visibility in the company (our attribution model gets mentioned in our earnings calls)! Please reach out to me if you’re interested or if you know someone I should talk to.
The New York City Office of Emergency Management (NYCEM) is searching for a Data Engineering Director.
The NYU Furman Center is looking for a Director of Data Strategy and Operations.
The Center for Family Support is hiring a Director of Analytics.
Cedar is looking for a Data Scientist / ML Engineer.
Conde Nast is seeking a Senior Business Intelligence Engineer.
Miscellany
Great post from Motif’s Sean Taylor on different types of causal questions in product analytics. I think this is a terrific framework and I’m going to go back and read this again soon because there’s a lot in here to use.
SF Marathon quietly admits to measuring their half-marathon course incorrectly. 🤦
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