RyxCommar
ryxcommar.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2019
RyxCommar writes critical essays on data science, machine learning, statistics, and the tech job market.
What HN saysCommenters cite its 'Goodbye, Data Science' essay and its Zillow and Prophet analysis, with one agreeing with its Prophet criticism.
32HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
27stories submitted
607story points
2 years agolast shared
2019people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Goodbye, Data Science8 people · 9 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 2Zillow, Prophet, time series, and prices4 people · 224 points · first shared 2021 · 143 comments on HN
- 3You Hate Matplotlib (2020)4 people · 5 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 4On moving from statistics to machine learning, the final stage of grief (2019)2 people · 177 points · first shared 2019 · 103 comments on HN
- 5Scikit-Learn’s Defaults Are Wrong2 people · 83 points · first shared 2019 · 38 comments on HN
- 6Why does getting a job in tech suck?2 people · 66 points · first shared 2024 · 52 comments on HN
- 7Caveats and Limitations of A/B Testing at Growth Tech Companies1 people · 23 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 8Retrospective on “On Moving from Statistics to Machine Learning”1 people · 6 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 9Advent of Code 2021 in Google Sheets: First 4 Days1 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 10A Cool SQL Problem (and Why It Is Also a Bullshit SQL Problem)1 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · 1 comments on HN
- 11On Being an Interviewer1 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 12Bitcoin Machine Learning1 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 13Intuitive Explanation of Arithmetic, Geometric, & Harmonic Mean1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 14What Makes an Interview Homework Assignment Good or Bad?1 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 15Should you ask data scientists a tricky maths question?1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
belter · 2025-02-24
"Finding a job now is harder than any time since the pandemic" - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/finding-a-job-now-is-harder-than-any…
"IT job market is still shrinking" - https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/15/it_job_market/
"Why does getting a job in tech suck right now?" - https://ryxcommar.com/2024/08/17/why-does-getting-a-job-in-tech-suck-r…
braza · 2023-09-26
I used Prophet and personally I do not have any problems, but I agree with the criticism that the tool it’s extremely focused in ergonomics that abstracts important aspects of the tool that can be used to built better models [1].
[1] - https://ryxcommar.com/2021/11/06/zillow-prophet-time-series-and-prices…
chubot · 2023-02-27
Reminds me of "Goodbye, Data Science" from a few months ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33787270
The main reason I soured on data science is that the work felt like it didn’t matter, in multiple senses of the words “didn’t matter”:
https://ryxcommar.com/2022/11/27/goodbye-data-science/
For part of my career over 10 years ago, I worked in data science for big tech, and I can definitely see the hazards ...
It is extremely easy to get hoodwinked into joining a useless data science team, one that is mere signaling for executives, ineffective, ignored, or otherwise
disqard · 2023-02-07
An interesting essay that echoes these same sentiments:
https://ryxcommar.com/2022/11/27/goodbye-data-science/
rossdavidh · 2021-11-27
No, the rumor was just that they put their thumb on the scale.
https://ryxcommar.com/2021/11/06/zillow-prophet-time-series-and-prices…
"Speaking of middle managers, word on the street is that Zillow Offers put their thumb on the scale of the algorithm to make it engage in more aggressive trades. Manually adjusting an algorithm isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you need to do it for the right reasons. And clearly that didn’t end up working out..."
That not everyone in the organization knew that, is just me speculating.
magnio · 2024-04-16
The problem with matplotlib has never been its capability. I consider its rendering backend and resulting image quality to be top-notch, and there are a billion options for you to customize.
That second part is the biggest problem with matplotlib: the imperative API cloned from Matlab is just terrible. The vast majority of matplotlib examples are rife with global states and overriding behavior (ever have to set font size twice to force it?) At first I thought that it's a bit clunky due to my inexperience, but no, the API is just that bad. See https://ryxcommar.com/2020/04/11/why-you-hate-matplotlib/
Now, I mean no hate to matplotlib, which is still a solid library. I appreciate their commitment to backward compatibility by keeping all those baggage, and I don't want them to yank them out, given that seaborn already mitigates most of the API problems, and Altair already brings enlightenment to Python plotting.
Now if only seaborn works with polars natively ...