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A panoramic view of Real World Data Science

Looking to distant landscape through binoculars, digital art. Image created by Bing Image Creator.

What’s the future of data science and AI in an LLM world?
Large language models
Skills
Tools
Ethics
People
Osama Rahman, director of the Data Science Campus at the UK Office for National Statistics, shared his thoughts on the past, present, and future of data science at an event…
Brian Tarran
May 26, 2023

Black and white portrait photo of Jasmine Holdsworth. Still from Real World Data Science video interview.

‘For me, data science is about bridging the gap between business requirements and the data that businesses have’
Data analysis
SQL
R
Bootcamps
Education
Jasmine Holdsworth ‘fell in love’ with data science while employed as a data analyst at Stack Overflow. Now working as a data scientist at Expedia Group, she explains how…
Brian Tarran
May 24, 2023

3D render of a conceptual visualisation of large language models by artist Tim West. Photo by Google DeepMind on Unsplash.

Large language models: Do we need to understand the maths, or simply recognise the limitations?
Large language models
AI
Communication
Regulation
Do we need to understand the inner workings of large language models before we use them? Or, is it enough to simply teach people to recognise that model outputs can’t always…
Brian Tarran
May 18, 2023

Photo of ChatGPT homescreen, by Levart_Photographer on Unsplash.

How is ChatGPT changing data science?
Large language models
AI
Skills
People
We sit down with the Royal Statistical Society’s Data Science and AI Section to hear how large language models are becoming part of the data science toolkit, and to consider…
Brian Tarran
May 11, 2023

Photo of Stephanie Hare by Mitzi de Margary. Photo supplied by Stephanie Hare, used with permission.

‘I’m way more into prevention than cure’: Stephanie Hare on why we need a culture of technology ethics
Technology ethics
AI ethics
Culture
Regulation
Stephanie Hare, author of ‘Technology is Not Neutral’, talks to Real World Data Science about the ‘wicked problem’ of technology and AI ethics, and why laws and regulations…
Brian Tarran
Apr 28, 2023

Black and white portrait photo of Sami Rahman. Photo supplied by Sami Rahman, used with permission.

‘I always thought someone like me couldn’t work in data, let alone data science’
Publishing
Data engineering
Data strategy
Machine learning
Sami Rahman, head of data engineering and data platform at Penguin Random House, parlayed a psychology degree into a data science career – inspired by a talk on machine…
Brian Tarran
Apr 24, 2023

A crowd of people talking, with speech bubbles representing the different voices, digital art. Image created by Real World Data Science using Microsoft Bing Image Creator.

The politics of performance measurement
Problem definition
Stakeholder communication
Relationship management
Funding decisions, particularly for projects in the public sector, should be informed by data on what works and what doesn’t. But performance assessment is rarely…
Noah Wright
Apr 18, 2023

Portrait of Adolphe Quetelet, superimposed on a photo of blooming purple lilacs. Quetelet portrait from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain. Lilacs photo by Arina Bogachyova/iStock.

A demonstration of the law of the flowering plants
Prediction
History of data science
Statistics
The day a flower blooms is one of the earliest phenomena studied with systematic data collection and analysis. The prediction rule developed nearly three centuries ago is…
Jonathan Auerbach
Apr 13, 2023

An illustration of a colorful rainbow, with each band of the rainbow featuring a selection of numbers to represent data. Image created by Bing Image Creator.

Data science as ‘a rainbow’, and other definitions
Updates
Themes
People
Data science means different things to different people. Former RSS president Sylvia Richardson has described it as ‘a rainbow of interconnected disciplines’. What’s your…
Brian Tarran
Mar 29, 2023

Black and white portrait photo of Tamanna Haque.

‘Data science challenges you to keep learning – there’ll always be new advances in the field’
Automotive
Analytics
Leadership
Machine learning
Tamanna Haque, lead data scientist at Jaguar Land Rover, shares her route into data science: from pursuing a maths degree at Manchester to analysing vehicle data for a major…
Brian Tarran
Mar 28, 2023

A teacher is marking homework and trying to decide whether a written piece of text has been created by a student or by a large language model, digital art. Created by DALL·E, prompt by Real World Data Science.

OpenAI’s text classifier won’t calm fears about AI-written homework
AI
Large language models
Classifiers
Screening tests
Educators are worried about ChatGPT being used by students for homework assignments, so OpenAI has released a tool to classify whether text is human- or AI-written. But…
Brian Tarran
Mar 15, 2023

Bikers in front of the United States Capitol in Washington DC. Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash.

US legislators get their data science act together
Data science education
Data literacy
Policy
A bill introduced in the US Congress wants to make funds available to develop data science and data literacy education across the United States. We sit down with education…
Brian Tarran
Mar 6, 2023

A shopping trolley being pushed around a supermarket. Photo by Marjan Blan | @marjanblan on Unsplash.

Using ‘basket complementarity’ to make product recommendations
Market basket analysis
Recommendation systems
Complementarity
Purchase suggestions – e.g., “if you are buying that, you might also want this” – are, to a large extent, informed by the concept of complementarity: that certain products…
Moinak Bhaduri
Mar 2, 2023

Woman painting while wearing virtual reality headset. Photo by Billetto Editorial on Unsplash.

Data science can help close the ‘digital skills’ gap, or so it seems
Skills
Training
AI
Machine learning
Data analytics
A ‘digital skills’ gap is harming employer productivity and growth, according to a survey by engineering body IET. But the ‘digital skills’ that are needed sound a lot like…
Brian Tarran
Feb 14, 2023

Photo of Heidi Seibold

Why open science is ‘just good science in a digital era’
Open science
Reproducible research

Real World Data Science speaks with statistician and data scientist Heidi Seibold about open science: what it means, the benefits of it, and how to move towards it.

Brian Tarran
Feb 3, 2023

Photo of Detlef Nauck

ChatGPT can hold a conversation, but lacks knowledge representation and original sources for verification
Machine learning
Large language models
AI

ChatGPT represents a next step in the evolution of large language models, says Detlef Nauck. However, there are still major challenges - and concerns - to overcome.

Brian Tarran
Jan 27, 2023

Photo of Erica Thompson

How to ‘Escape from Model Land’: an interview with Erica Thompson
Modelling
Ethics

Author Erica Thompson talks to Real World Data Science about the ‘social element’ of mathematical modelling, how it manifests, and what to do about it.

Brian Tarran
Jan 25, 2023

A researcher in a field shines a light on stylised waves of noise, as if attempting to identify or extract a signal. Image generated by DALL.E 2 from prompts provided by Real World Data Science.

Pulling patterns out of data with a graph
Data management
Dimension reduction
Graph theory
Large volumes of data are pouring in every day from scientific experiments, so much so that it is now commonplace to perform dimension reduction in order to reduce a large…
Andrew Saydjari
Jan 24, 2023

Flyer for RSS International Conference 2023, for all statisticians and data scientists. Taking place in Harrogate, 4-7 September 2023.

We’re taking Real World Data Science on the road
Updates
Events

Join us at the RSS International Conference 2023 in Harrogate, 4-7 September.

Brian Tarran
Jan 18, 2023

Photo of an email app on a mobile device screen, showing 2 unread notifications. Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.

Explore the RSS Data Science & AI Section newsletter, right here!
Updates
Newsletters

We’re starting the year with a new addition to the site: a page dedicated to the excellent RSS Data Science & AI Section newsletter.

Brian Tarran
Jan 5, 2023

Photo taken from the backseat of a Lyft vehicle. Driver is seen in profile to the left of the picture. Phone is mounted on the dash and displays a maps app that is tracking the route to the passenger's destination. Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash.

Determining the best way to route drivers for ridesharing via reinforcement learning
A/B testing
Reinforcement learning
Statistics
A/B testing is often used to evaluate the impact of design ‘treatments’ — for example, are people who see advert A more likely to buy something than those who see advert B?…
Brian King
Dec 13, 2022

DataScienceBites logo. A dark grey circle with bite marks cut out. Overlaid text says, Import grad_students as writers, import new_research_papers as nrp, print(writers + nrp) and the title DataScienceBites.

Sink your teeth into some data science papers with our brand new blog
Updates
Content ideas
Call for contributions

Today we’re launching DataScienceBites – a new member of the ScienceBites family – offering bite-sized summaries of data science papers.

Brian Tarran
Dec 13, 2022

An image created by the Stable Diffusion 2.1 Demo. The model was asked to produce an image with the prompt, 'Text from an old book cut up like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing'.

LLMs in the news: hype, tripe, and everything in between
Machine learning
Large language models
AI

We’re back discussing large language models after two weeks of ‘breakthrough’ announcements, excitable headlines, and some all-too-familiar ethical concerns.

Brian Tarran
Dec 9, 2022

A screenshot of an exchange between Real World Data Science editor Brian Tarran and ChatGPT.

A chat with ChatGPT
Machine learning
Large language models
AI
’Hello there! I’m a large language model trained by OpenAI, so I don’t have the ability to experience emotions or have a physical presence. I’m here to provide information…
Brian Tarran
Dec 9, 2022

A photo of a black stencilled number 4 on a white brick wall. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Four themes for potential contributors to think about
Updates
Themes
Content ideas

Can data science save the world? What is a data scientist? What statistical ideas do data scientists need to know? And, what’s happening in the world of data science?

Brian Tarran
Dec 1, 2022

A black keyboard at the bottom of the picture has an open book on it, with red words in labels floating on top, with a letter A balanced on top of them. The perspective makes the composition form a kind of triangle from the keyboard to the capital A. The AI filter makes it look like a messy, with a kind of cartoon style.

Why large language models should come with a content warning
Machine learning
Large language models
AI

The outputs of LLMs seem impressive, but users need to be wary of possible bias, plagiarism and model ‘hallucinations’.

Brian Tarran
Nov 23, 2022

Portrait photos of 12 members of the Real World Data Science Editorial team

Meet the team
People
Biographies

Introducing the editors of Real World Data Science.

Editorial Board
Oct 18, 2022
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