Why am I writing this, and who is it for? Is it for you?
After a stimulating conversation with friends or coworkers or family, I often find myself with many additional thoughts and questions about models and frameworks and logical problems. Given the strictures of time and the pressures of practical topics often these paths of greater depth and finer granularity are relegated to ink marked pages of small notebooks on my night stand. These posts will serve as a more visible and accessible rendition, while the self-induced pressure of thinking (nay, daring to hope) that someone else might read them is immensely helpful in instigating a fuller, more coherent formulation.
While I primarily intend this as a searchable archive of my own, I have some thoughts about the “who” of my many hatted selves I am variously addressing or arguing with throughout. Perhaps you are similar enough to one or more of these such that the verbiage arranged in these missives may be both intelligible and relevant to your thinking.
Product People
These are a many chapeau’d crew indeed, ranging from Product Managers to Analysts to Statisticians and Data Scientists. Anyone who is obsessed with building things and making them the best they can be. I have worked in many of these roles, in addition to UI/X design and software engineering, and think a lot about the shared language between these roles and disciplines and the assumptions that such work stands on. What are the edges of a “product” and how do we think about products in relation to one another? What is “better” and for whom? Many of my posts come from this world, and are mostly rooted in the world of software and connected systems.
Data Scientists, Machine Learners
Under my Publications you can find my academic research work on connectionist ML models, Genetic Algorithms, and the like. These posts are intended for an entirely different audience and perspective, translating and synthesizing the precise and exclusive language and ideas of the academic domain into the language I would use in a daily conversation. Additionally, I intended to dig into some models and theories that I’m working on (with math and code examples).
Future Me
Let’s face it, at the core I’m writing and posting these because I feel compelled to put my thoughts down in text, to construct some sort of logical structure and argument that is too complicated to do in a single statement. I am my own audience, and I see these positions standing on each other to build towards a larger narrative whole. Keeping them all in one place is necessary in order to put the capstone into the bridge under construction.
Dr. Ben Smith is a Data Scientist and thinker, fascinated by the appearance of computers in our daily lives, creativity, and human struggles. He has had the privilege to think, learn, and write at the University of Illinois, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Case Western Reserve U., IUPUI, and at Boardable: Board Management Software, Inc.
If you have feedback or questions please use Contact to get in touch. I welcome thoughtful responses and constructive critique.