Why am I teaching my cat data science?

[Cross-posted from ICanHazDataScience]

I’m a data scientist. Not a ‘real’ one, as in someone who can write code that pulls lots of interesting comments out of Twitter and turns them into really pretty pictures without having to look up lots of things about algorithms and code. But I do spend a lot of time getting my hands on data and making sense of it, and I do know a bit about the work that data science is based on.  And I’m still learning about data science, so I’m writing this blog to store and hopefully pass on some useful tips and ideas.

Apparently, the best way to learn something is to try to teach it too, but I don’t have any students here. So this is Emily. She’s a cat: she likes sleeping, chasing small furry things (mice, possums, toes, that sort of thing), Meow Mix and hanging out next to my laptop, which (see above) is why I don’t type things with ‘q’ in them very often. She’s a pretty good listener, but will run off if you start to get boring, repetitive (or tickle her ears ‘wrong’).  She’s also prepared to try almost anything that will help to improve her world, although not for very long.  In short, she’s a pretty representative student (apologies to all my former students out there: you were much much better than this).

Onwards… with the help of the LolCat translator