Data Science Retreat

Berlin, Jan 2014

http://datascienceretreat.com/

Introduction to the first Data Science school in Europe

Meet Stefan, he's the Chief data scientist of bigCompany.

They wanted to go 'all in' with big data, but needed people capable of taming it.

He realized it's not easy to find Data Scientists.

He started his search in Germany, but soon he had to expand to EU, and the world

Stefan found an ex academic; but he couldn’t put in production what he

designed. His coding skills were mediocre

What do you mean ‘sub-

second queries by Monday’?

Stefan found a great programmer, but he didn't know any machine learning

nor stats

What do you mean ‘improve predictions two

standard deviations’?

When talking to the CEO, he didn’t understand them, nor how they could

produce value for the company

€?

Stefan finally hired Ben, a candidate that was good at math, programming, and

understood the business side!

… but 3 months later Google snatched him! John was very sad. His project will not fly!

Then Laura, Stefan’s friend, pointed him to

Data Science Retreat… an intensive course helping selected fellows

ramp-up fast for a career in data science. “Tell me more…”. Stefan was very interested.

Curriculum:

• Formulating the analytical

problem

• Getting data (APIs, feature

engineering)

• Finding insights, making

predictions

• Regression

• Classification

• Recommendation (clustering)

• Mathematical fundamentals

• R as a programming language

• Data at scale

• Hadoop ecosystem

• Distributed machine learning

• Software engineering, solid

implementation practices

• Telling the story, making the case

• Communication skills

• Visualization (D3, shiny)

TEAM: Chief-Data-Scientist-level mentors

Methodology

• Ten students per batch

• Pair programming and code reviews with mentors (guild model)

• Datasets come from companies (non-NDA only)

• Portfolio project, where the fellow demonstrates what he can do

end-to-end to deliver value

• Weekly presentation training to improve communication to non-

technical stakeholders (video feedback)

Stefan could interview ten

data scientists that were

as good as Ben.

He hired three, an they jumped into

their roles with little training.

Stefan was Ecstatic!

How It works

• Companies can enter recruitment agreements at ¼ first year’s

salary. Interviews happen at the end of the course

• Selected partners can sponsor data Science retreat in

exchange for privileged access to the students during the course,

influencing the curriculum, providing datasets of their interest,

etc. A full ‘outsourced internship’, building a relationship over

weeks instead of having a one-shot interview

• Additionally, the recommended gold sponsorship (30.000€)

offers:

oBranding on website, offices, and all presentations mentors do

during 2014

oFirst-pick; candidates will only be presented to other

companies after the gold sponsor is done

How It works

Data Science RetreatContact:

Jose Quesada, PhD,Director, Data Science Retreat Berlin

jose@datascienceretreat.com

DO you want to be a sponsor?

And Stefan’s CEO?

He’s optimistic about thisnew big-data deployment!