Comment author: gjm 22 August 2016 10:13:27PM -1 points [-]

Wait, your category (ii) is surely exactly what we care about here. We want to know: For someone whose background would lead you not to expect high-paying data science jobs, is Signal effective in getting them a better chance of a high-paying data science job?

Comment author: JonahSinick 23 August 2016 12:30:06AM *  1 point [-]

Wait, your category (ii) is surely exactly what we care about here.

Yes, I see how my last message was ambiguous.

What I had in mind in bringing up category (ii) is that we've had some students who had a priori worse near term employment prospects relative to the usual range of bootcamp attendees, who are better positions than they had been and who got what they were looking to get from the program, while not yet having $100k+ paying jobs. And most students who would have gotten $100k+ paying jobs even if they hadn't attended appear to have benefited from attending the program.

The nature of the value that we have to add is very much specific to the student.

Comment author: ThisSpaceAvailable 21 August 2016 01:31:02AM *  4 points [-]

I suppose this might be better place to ask than trying to resurrect a previous thread:

What kind of statistics can Signal offer on prior cohorts? E.g. percentage with jobs, percentage with jobs in data science field, percentage with incomes over $100k, median income of graduates, mean income of graduates, mean income of employed graduates, etc.? And how do the different cohorts compare? (Those are just examples; I don't necessarily expect to get those exact answers, but it would be good to have some data and have it be presented in a manner that is at least partially resistant to cherry picking/massaging, etc.) Basically, what sort of evidence E does Signal have to offer, such that I should update towards it being effective, given both E, and "E has been selected by Signal, and Signal has an interest in choosing E to be as flattering rather than as informative as possible" are true?

Also, the last I heard, there was a deposit requirement. What's the refund policy on that?

Comment author: JonahSinick 22 August 2016 09:33:02PM 1 point [-]

Hello! I'm a cofounder of Signal Data Science.

Because our students have come into the program from very heterogeneous backgrounds (ranging from high school dropout to math PhD with years of experience as a software engineer), summary statistics along the lines that you're looking for are less informative than might seem to be the case prima facie. In particular, we don't yet have meaningfully large sample of students who don't fall into one of the categories of (i) people who would have gotten high paying jobs anyway and (ii) people who one wouldn't expect to have gotten high paying jobs by now, based on their backgrounds.

If you're interested in the possibility of attending the program, we encourage you to fill out our short application form. If it seems like it might be a good fit for you, we'd be happy to provide detailed answers to any questions that you might have about job placement.

Comment author: ThisSpaceAvailable 16 June 2016 02:21:42AM 0 points [-]

"We're planning another one in Berkeley from May 2nd – July 24th."

Is that June 24th?

Comment author: JonahSinick 17 June 2016 10:48:35PM 0 points [-]

Yes, that was supposed to be June 24th! We have a third one from July 5th – August 24th. There are still spaces in the program if you're interested in attending.

Comment author: Fluttershy 12 April 2016 02:22:53AM 1 point [-]

I've already had versions of this conversation with Robert and Jonah in person, but I'll reiterate a few things I shared with them here, since you asked politely. Also, this conversation is becoming aversive to me, so it will become increasingly difficult for me to respond to your comments as we get farther and farther down this comment chain.

specific examples of times when Jonah's explanations were too abstract and not sufficiently practical?

There were actually multiple times during the first couple weeks when I (or my partner and I) would spend 4+ hours trying to fix one particular line of code, and Jonah would give big-picture answers about e.g. how linear regression worked in theory, when what I'd asked for were specific suggestions on how to fix that line of code. This led me to giving up on asking Jonah for help after long enough.

what are some specific topics that you think were neglected in favor of more abstract but less applicable material?

Intermediate and advanced SQL, practice of certain social skills (e.g. handshakes, being interested in your interviewer, and other interview-relevant social skills), and possibly nonlinear models.

Comment author: JonahSinick 12 April 2016 09:07:44AM 3 points [-]

Thanks for the written feedback (which adds to what I had gleaned in person).

There were actually multiple times during the first couple weeks when I (or my partner and I) would spend 4+ hours trying to fix one particular line of code, and Jonah would give big-picture answers about e.g. how linear regression worked in theory, when what I'd asked for were specific suggestions on how to fix that line of code. This led me to giving up on asking Jonah for help after long enough.

I think that what happened here is me having misunderstood what you were asking for, rather than any disinclination on my part to help you with individual lines of code. I will take this feedback into account.

Intermediate and advanced SQL, practice of certain social skills (e.g. handshakes, being interested in your interviewer, and other interview-relevant social skills), and possibly nonlinear models.

This is helpful detail regarding what you were looking for. Which topics would you have preferred to have been been dropped in favor of these?

Comment author: Toggle 11 April 2016 05:53:32PM 1 point [-]

How many students have found work in data science (so far), what problems are they solving now, and what are the associated companies/cities/salaries?

Comment author: JonahSinick 12 April 2016 01:26:52AM *  1 point [-]

Hi Toggle,

Thanks for your question!

Most of our students have just started looking for jobs over the past ~2 weeks, and the job search process in the tech sector typically takes ~2 months, from sending out resumes to accepting offers (see, e.g. "Managing your time" in Alexei's post Maximizing Your Donations via a Job).

The feedback loop here is correspondingly longer than we'd like. We expect to have an answer to your question by the time we advertise our third cohort.

Comment author: Fluttershy 19 December 2015 12:56:38PM 1 point [-]

Neat! Here are the first questions I have:

  • Do you require applicants to have a graduate degree?
  • Zipfian Academy, App Academy, and other bootcamps are 12 weeks long, and (the first instance of) this one is only 6 weeks long. Why is this, and what are you cutting out relative to other data science bootcamps to make it this short? (This is my most pressing question).
  • As a tie-in to my last question, is there a hiring event which employers will be invited to around the end of the program?
  • Do you know which language(s) you'll be using?

Good luck; do keep us posted.

Comment author: JonahSinick 20 December 2015 01:34:58AM *  3 points [-]

Thanks for your interest! Some responses below.

Do you require applicants to have a graduate degree?

No degree is required. We're selecting on ability rather than on credentials.

Zipfian Academy, App Academy, and other bootcamps are 12 weeks long, and (the first instance of) this one is only 6 weeks long. Why is this, and what are you cutting out relative to other data science bootcamps to make it this short? (This is my most pressing question).

  1. Based on the preliminary interest that people have expressed anticipate that the students in our first cohort will be significantly stronger than is typical of data science bootcamps, and will correspondingly be able to cover the material at an accelerated pace. We expect at least some of our cohorts to run a full 12 weeks.

  2. Regarding the comparison with coding bootcamps, there are reasons to believe that the amount that somebody needs to know to be in the top x% of industry data scientists is less than the amount that's needed to be in the top x% of programmers. (I can elaborate.)

  3. We're cutting out some of the more advanced machine learning algorithms, which industry data scientists use infrequently enough so that they can be a distraction from getting started.

As a tie-in to my last question, is there a hiring event which employers will be invited to around the end of the program?

Very few bootcamp students who I know got their jobs through this route, so we may or may not do this depend on how efficient it is relative to other routes. Like other bootcamps that offer the "pay later" model, we have a large stake in ensuring that our students find jobs.

Do you know which language(s) you'll be using?

We'll be working primarily in R, and teaching SQL as well.

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 19 December 2015 04:09:22PM 1 point [-]

I hope you throw SQL into your core skills bucket list.

Comment author: JonahSinick 20 December 2015 12:58:50AM 0 points [-]

Yes, we'll definitely be covering this.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 19 December 2015 06:00:57PM 3 points [-]

Hey Jonah, have you thought about doing some causal inference stuff in the full length course?

Comment author: JonahSinick 20 December 2015 12:58:34AM 2 points [-]

Thanks for the suggestion. That would be wonderful. We'll definitely think about this – it's a matter of whether we can create a sufficiently simple presentation of the material so that the marginal returns per unit time are high for the student population that we'll be working with.

Comment author: ChristianKl 30 June 2015 12:05:50AM 0 points [-]

It might be that I have gotten to cynic but if you measure 6 variables it's more likely that one of them get a statistical significant result then if you first turn those 6 variables into 2 variables via PCA.

My project gives a proof of concept for what I'm talking about in the context of social psychology. I've never seen such an application. So no, it's not just the realization that it could be applied, it's also giving a proof of concept: that's why it took ~1500 hours rather than ~10 hours.

That probably where there's something I don't understand. I don't understand why the analysis took ~1500 hours. Spending that much time with a dataset also instinctively triggers "fishing expedition" in my head. I don't know to what extend that's warranted.

I'm not sure that you have shown that it makes more sense to interpret that factor individual preference is about intelligence and sincerity than that it's about the value of fun.

As far as I can see it could also be that fun&physical attractiveness is simply more valued.

So I'd strongly encourage you to pursue your ideas more. I've been looking some at the General Social Survey data, where I haven't yet found something highly nontrivial (maybe I'm looking at the data the wrong way, or maybe it's just not a good dataset for this). I'd be happy to share my code with you / a cleaned form of the data, if you're interested in exploring factors for political labels.

In the case of the spending effort on the GSS I can't envision what success looks like. It's straightforward to find PCR factors but I don't know how to put them to good use.

A more interesting project would be to explore LW's ideological landscape. It would be very interested in how various rationalist beliefs interact with each other. Does seeing yourself as an "aspiring rationalist" correlates to beliefs on UFAI risk?

Having a project that searches where the main dimensions of disagreement in this community would be valuable. Maybe 300 questions that are answered on a Likert scale. Maybe 150 rationality questions, 100 big 5 questions and 50 autism questions.

Comment author: JonahSinick 30 June 2015 05:25:04AM 0 points [-]

It might be that I have gotten to cynic but if you measure 6 variables it's more likely that one of them get a statistical significant result then if you first turn those 6 variables into 2 variables via PCA.

Yes, this is the point :-)

Comment author: Pentashagon 30 June 2015 04:03:17AM 5 points [-]

I was disturbed by what I saw, but I didn't realize that math academia is actually functioning as a cult

I'm sure you're aware that the word "cult" is a strong claim that requires a lot of evidence, but I'd also issue a friendly warning that to me at least it immediately set off my "crank" alarm bells. I've seen too many Usenet posters who are sure they have a P=/!=NP proof, or a proof that set theory is false, or etc. who ultimately claim that because "the mathematical elite" are a cult that no one will listen to them. A cult generally engages in active suppression, often defamation, and not simply exclusion. Do you have evidence of legitimate mathematical results or research being hidden/withdrawn from journals or publicly derided, or is it more of an old boy's club that's hard for outsiders to participate in and that plays petty politics to the damage of the science?

Grothendieck's problems look to be political and interpersonal. Perelman's also. I think it's one thing to claim that mathematical institutions are no more rational than any other politicized body, and quite another to claim that it's a cult. Or maybe most social behavior is too cult-like. If so; perhaps don't single out mathematics.

I've seen a lot of people develop serious mental health problems in connection with their experiences in academia.

I question the direction of causation. Historically many great mathematicians have been mentally and socially atypical and ended up not making much sense with their later writings. Either mathematics has always had an institutional problem or mathematicians have always had an incidence of mental difficulties (or a combination of both; but I would expect one to dominate).

Especially in Thurston's On Proof and Progress in Mathematics I can appreciate the problem of trying to grok specialized areas of mathematics. The terminology and symbology is opaque to the uninitiated. It reminds me of section 1 of the Metamath Book which expresses similar unhappiness with the state of knowledge between specialist fields of mathematics and the general difficulty of learning mathematics. I had hoped that Metamath would become more popular and tie various subfields together through unifying theories and definitions, but as far as I can tell it languishes as a hobbyist project for a few dedicated mathematicians.

Comment author: JonahSinick 30 June 2015 05:22:04AM 2 points [-]

I'm sure you're aware that the word "cult" is a strong claim that requires a lot of evidence, but I'd also issue a friendly warning that to me at least it immediately set off my "crank" alarm bells.

Thanks, yeah, people have been telling me that I need to be more careful in how I frame things. :-)

Do you have evidence of legitimate mathematical results or research being hidden/withdrawn from journals or publicly derided, or is it more of an old boy's club that's hard for outsiders to participate in and that plays petty politics to the damage of the science?

The latter, but note that that's not necessarily less damaging than active suppression would be.

Or maybe most social behavior is too cult-like. If so; perhaps don't single out mathematics.

Yes, this is what I believe. The math community is just unusually salient to me, but I should phrase things more carefully.

I question the direction of causation. Historically many great mathematicians have been mentally and socially atypical and ended up not making much sense with their later writings. Either mathematics has always had an institutional problem or mathematicians have always had an incidence of mental difficulties (or a combination of both; but I would expect one to dominate).

Most of the people who I have in mind did have preexisting difficulties. I meant something like "relative to a counterfactual where academia was serving its intended function." People of very high intellectual curiosity sometimes approach academia believing that it will be an oasis and find this not to be at all the case, and that the structures in place are in fact hostile to them.

This is not what the government should be supporting with taxpayer dollars.

Especially in Thurston's On Proof and Progress in Mathematics I can appreciate the problem of trying to grok specialized areas of mathematics.

What are your own interests?

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