Conor's Newsletter: Issue 35
A/B testing at Squarespace, machine learning deployment, and the science of persuasion
Hey all. Quick update on things. It seems like the newsletter is landing in the spam folder for some of you, so if you would like to keep receiving my thoughts each week, then make sure to mark this as "not spam" or add my Gmail contact. That should do the trick. Thanks for all the support!
Let's get to the stories and links that I thought were worth sharing this week. As always, enjoy the newsletter. If this was forwarded to you, you can go ahead and subscribe at conordewey.com.
What I read —
I found this post from Benedict Evans on machine learning to be interesting. With plenty of lines like "ML is the new SQL," how could you resist? Machine Learning Deployment.
Second week running with an article from Erik Bernhardsson. This one is a bit older, but as someone learning more about the underlying data stack, this helped out. Data Architecture vs. Backend Architecture.
My colleague Laura Elsener wrote a great blog post on A/B testing at Squarespace. I can personally vouch for all of these points! How We Talk About A/B Test Results.
What I found interesting —
This tweet from Nate Silver hit home for me. Problem framing and understanding are most of the battle. Be A Good Data Scientist.
I recently read Influence by Robert Cialdini and I found this to be a good summary video. Science of Persuasion.
I struggle with asking for help a lot. This exercise is a really nice forcing function. 15 Minute Rule.
Quote I'm pondering —
"It's easy to bounce from one new idea to the next, exploring your intellectual curiosity. But having an impact requires a decade of moving the ball forward one yard every day, sometimes in a very mundane way, through multi-year ups and downs." — Brian Armstrong