A week back I had the pleasure to talk on machine learning at PyConUK 2017 in the inaugural PyDataCardiff track. Tim Vivian-Griffiths and colleagues did a wonderful job building our second PyData conference event in the UK. The PyConUK conference just keeps getting better – 700 folk, 5 tracks, a huge kids track and lots of sub-events. Pythontastic! Cat Lamin has a lovely write-up of the main conference.
If you’re interested in PyDataCardiff then note that Tim has setup an announcements-list, join it to hear about meetup events around Cardiff and Bristol.
I spoke on the Saturday on “Machine Learning Libraries You’d Wish You’d Known About” (slides here) – this is a precis of topics that I figured out this year:
- Using Pandas multi-core with Dask
- Automating your machine learning with TPOT on sklearn
- Visualising your machine learning with YellowBrick
- Explaining why you get certain machine learning answers with ELI5 and LIME
- See my “Explaining Regression” Notebook for lots of examples with YellowBrick, ELI5, LIME and more (I used this to build my talk)
As with last year I was speaking in part to existing engineers who are ML-curious, to show ways of approaching machine learning diagnosis with an engineer’s-mindset. Last year I introduced Random Forests for engineers using a worked example. Below you’ll find for video for this year’s talk:
I’m planning to do more teaching on data science and Python in 2018 – if this might interest you, please join my training mailing list. Posts will go out rarely to announce new public and private training sessions that’ll run in the UK.
At the end of my talk I made a request of the audience, I’m going to start doing this more frequently. My request was “please send me a physical postcard if I taught you something” – I’d love to build up some evidence on my wall that these talks are useful. I received my first postcard a few days back, I’m rather stoked. Thank you Pieter! If you want to send me a postcard, just send me an email. Do please remember to thank your speakers – it is a tiny gesture that really carries weight.
Thanks to O’Reilly I also got to participate in another High Performance Python signing, this time with Steve Holden (Python in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference), Harry Percival (Test-Driven Development with Python 2e) and Nicholas Tollervy (Programming with MicroPython):
I want to say a huge thanks to everyone I met – I look forward to a bigger and better PyConUK and PyDataCardiff next year!
If you like data science and you’re in the UK, please do check-out our PyDataLondon meetup. If you’re after a job, I have a data scientist’s jobs list.
Ian is a Chief Interim Data Scientist via his Mor Consulting. Sign-up for Data Science tutorials in London and to hear about his data science thoughts and jobs. He lives in London, is walked by his high energy Springer Spaniel and is a consumer of fine coffees.