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I am wary when people wax lyrical about all of the ways they love using machine learning on data. It makes me nervous because i worry that they have a hammer a

I am wary when people wax lyrical about all of the ways they love using machine learning on data. It makes me nervous because i worry that they have a hammer and can't wait to use it on anything vaguely nail shaped.

seisvelas 7y ago
Yep, that's why I make sure to set time aside for toy problems. Creating contrived problems can sometimes scratch that itch to use a certain technology that don't really fit into what I'm doing at work.
mr_toad 7y ago
ML makes predictions; testable predictions. Machine learning is an area where you need to be able to produce results. Fake it ‘til you make it isn’t going to cut it for long. Either these people produce something that works, or they don’t.
- geezerjay 7y ago
  > Machine learning is an area where you need to be able to produce results. Having to produce results is one thing. Mindlessly throwing tensorflow/pytorch at problems is an entirely different problem. It's like those front-end devs who mindlessly insist that they need to use heavy javascript frameworks with convoluted build processes such as React/Angular to churn out a static web page with a couple of paragraphs and images.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - developorrRRRGH 7y ago
    You neglect the pointy-haired boss factor. The tendency to pine for an ever-heavier minified, transpiled, inscrutable javascript blob, megabytes in size, also comes from bosses impressed by anyone displaying an aura of arrogance. “Oh yeah? Well, I’mmm using [sparkle thingie] and it’s just sooo much better.” That mode of thinking also comes from the top. I once watched this turd of a middle manager lean on his underling, while sporting the biggest boss boner about basically nothing at all. The mandate was that it's time to transpile everything under a new framework. One framework to rule them all. So they get to this place where all the global variables are fucked, and it's a mess. Just put everything in namespaces, we NEED to move forward. Then, blah blah blah components, blah blah blah modules, blah blah blah Bruce and Harriet Nyborg. Totally clueless to the idea that he might sound like a total fucking sham. It's just hot air. None of it's real. There's blood in the water only in the sense that when the annual reviews come around, woah! Look out! 1% raise coming through! Finally. Minted as assistant manager at burger king. It's just puffy egos in the king's court. No one is solving real problems. It's all boondoggles and exercise bikes at another bullshit job. Here. Plug this wad of ad tech into this garbage news article template. Gotta be able to say it's "newer" and "better" too. Moths to a flame. Pointy-haired boss perks up at all the talk of pointy, shiny objects. Well, I think it should fluff my scrotum too, what do you think? I concur. Now the ad tech gets bundled with a boss scrotum fluffer. Sprints go by. And nothing is getting done. Floundering, aimlessly adrift in high seas. The JS blob just gets bigger and dumber, but we march on. It must transpile. We have to be able to say we're hip. That we're "with it" or everyone will laugh at us. The old way is disgusting. And under a new boss it stinks of "not invented here" syndrome. The old boss owned it, so it must be terrible. Underlings scuttle like cockroaches at footsteps, terrified of boss and middle manager. Truly fucking dickless assholes. Spineless, and without souls. Non-player characters. The demands are put forward. Begging is silenced. People are fired. Heads roll. It must transpile. We need to be able to say that we "do that" or people will think we're dinosaurs. (even though we are) It's kind of a joke to witness a death march in a technical role. Mostly because, if the team is such a push over, to even entertain what is obviously a death march, they probably aren't smart enough to do their job. So, when you see cargo cult JS floating around, it's fair to estimate it as a product of clucking trendy drones, and wimps getting trampled by boss thundercock.
- otabdeveloper1 7y ago
  > ML makes predictions; testable predictions. Well, no. ML solves the classification problem, not the prediction problem. E.g.: The "is this a cat picture" problem is effectively solved, but we _still_ can't reliably predict something as primitive as a simple binary proportion.
- mattkrause 7y ago
  Yes and no. You can certainly produce some plots and numbers, and possibly even plots and numbers that look good to your boss/clients/investors. The (multi)million dollar question is whether those numbers are actually meaningful. I think this is where a lot of ‘data science’, both in industry and academia, falls down. Some state-of-the-art models don’t even generalize to test sets drawn from the same database, let alone similar data sources or the actual business problem. Unless you run a pet shop, telling breeds of dog apart, a la ImageNet, is probably not your goal.

seisvelas 7y ago

Yep, that's why I make sure to set time aside for toy problems. Creating contrived problems can sometimes scratch that itch to use a certain technology that don't really fit into what I'm doing at work.

mr_toad 7y ago

ML makes predictions; testable predictions. Machine learning is an area where you need to be able to produce results. Fake it ‘til you make it isn’t going to cut it for long. Either these people produce something that works, or they don’t.

geezerjay 7y ago
> Machine learning is an area where you need to be able to produce results. Having to produce results is one thing. Mindlessly throwing tensorflow/pytorch at problems is an entirely different problem. It's like those front-end devs who mindlessly insist that they need to use heavy javascript frameworks with convoluted build processes such as React/Angular to churn out a static web page with a couple of paragraphs and images.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- developorrRRRGH 7y ago
  You neglect the pointy-haired boss factor. The tendency to pine for an ever-heavier minified, transpiled, inscrutable javascript blob, megabytes in size, also comes from bosses impressed by anyone displaying an aura of arrogance. “Oh yeah? Well, I’mmm using [sparkle thingie] and it’s just sooo much better.” That mode of thinking also comes from the top. I once watched this turd of a middle manager lean on his underling, while sporting the biggest boss boner about basically nothing at all. The mandate was that it's time to transpile everything under a new framework. One framework to rule them all. So they get to this place where all the global variables are fucked, and it's a mess. Just put everything in namespaces, we NEED to move forward. Then, blah blah blah components, blah blah blah modules, blah blah blah Bruce and Harriet Nyborg. Totally clueless to the idea that he might sound like a total fucking sham. It's just hot air. None of it's real. There's blood in the water only in the sense that when the annual reviews come around, woah! Look out! 1% raise coming through! Finally. Minted as assistant manager at burger king. It's just puffy egos in the king's court. No one is solving real problems. It's all boondoggles and exercise bikes at another bullshit job. Here. Plug this wad of ad tech into this garbage news article template. Gotta be able to say it's "newer" and "better" too. Moths to a flame. Pointy-haired boss perks up at all the talk of pointy, shiny objects. Well, I think it should fluff my scrotum too, what do you think? I concur. Now the ad tech gets bundled with a boss scrotum fluffer. Sprints go by. And nothing is getting done. Floundering, aimlessly adrift in high seas. The JS blob just gets bigger and dumber, but we march on. It must transpile. We have to be able to say we're hip. That we're "with it" or everyone will laugh at us. The old way is disgusting. And under a new boss it stinks of "not invented here" syndrome. The old boss owned it, so it must be terrible. Underlings scuttle like cockroaches at footsteps, terrified of boss and middle manager. Truly fucking dickless assholes. Spineless, and without souls. Non-player characters. The demands are put forward. Begging is silenced. People are fired. Heads roll. It must transpile. We need to be able to say that we "do that" or people will think we're dinosaurs. (even though we are) It's kind of a joke to witness a death march in a technical role. Mostly because, if the team is such a push over, to even entertain what is obviously a death march, they probably aren't smart enough to do their job. So, when you see cargo cult JS floating around, it's fair to estimate it as a product of clucking trendy drones, and wimps getting trampled by boss thundercock.
otabdeveloper1 7y ago
> ML makes predictions; testable predictions. Well, no. ML solves the classification problem, not the prediction problem. E.g.: The "is this a cat picture" problem is effectively solved, but we _still_ can't reliably predict something as primitive as a simple binary proportion.
mattkrause 7y ago
Yes and no. You can certainly produce some plots and numbers, and possibly even plots and numbers that look good to your boss/clients/investors. The (multi)million dollar question is whether those numbers are actually meaningful. I think this is where a lot of ‘data science’, both in industry and academia, falls down. Some state-of-the-art models don’t even generalize to test sets drawn from the same database, let alone similar data sources or the actual business problem. Unless you run a pet shop, telling breeds of dog apart, a la ImageNet, is probably not your goal.