Consequences of mistaking models for software

Twelve traps to avoid when building and deploying models

In Part 1 of this series on data scientists are from Mars and software engineers are from Venus we examined the five key dimensions of difference between software and models. The natural follow on question to ask is — So What? Does it really matter if models are conflated with software and data scientists are treated as software engineers? After all for a large cross-section of the population, and more importantly the business world, the similarities between them are far more visible than their differences. In fact, Andrej Karpathy refers to this new way of solving problems using models as Software 2.0. If they are really the next iteration of software are these differences really consequential. Read More

#data-science, #devops

Data Scientists are from Mars and Software Developers are from Venus (Part 1)

Mars and Venus are very different planets. Mars’s atmosphere is very thin and it can get very cold; while Venus’s atmosphere is very thick and it can get very hot — hot enough to melt lead!.

…Software Engineers and Data Scientists come from two different worlds — one from Venus and the other from Mars. They have different backgrounds mindsets, and deal with different sets of issues. They have a number of things in common too. In this and subsequent blogs we will look at the key differences (and similarities) between them and why those differences exist and what kind of bridge we need to create between them. In this blog, we explore the fundamental differences between software and models. Read More

#data-science, #devops