SSA Vic July Event-"Really Useful Engines - Engineering Data Science" by Miles McBain

The Victorian branch is very excited to welcome Australian R legend Miles McBain to speak to us about “Very Useful Engines: Engineering Data Science”.

Attention to those attending in-person:

• You have a chance to win one of two SSA T-shirts. We will collect your names to enter into the draw and draw the names at the conclusion of the talk. 
• We will be heading to dinner with the speaker afterwards. You are welcomed to join (please bring cash so it is easier to split-bill). 

The modern Data Science team dreams of impact, or being declared "Really Useful". The path to this goal is fraught with challenges, and in response we have become increasingly dependent on workflows steeped in code, fortified by Software Engineering principles. Slowly but surely it's become apparent to me that this fortification is insufficient. Data Science has unique failure modes, on which Software Engineering tools are mute. There remains plenty of scope for Data Science teams to become mired in "Confusion and Delay".

In this talk Miles build on previous expositions of individual Data Scientist workflows in an attempt to distil principles that can transform Data Science teams into Data Science engines.

Miles McBain is an ex-Software Engineer, Research Software Engineer, and Consulting Data Scientist now working as a public sector Data Scientist in Queensland Fire and Emergency Services. He codes in R and takes pleasure in devoting inordinate effort to developing increasingly niche software tools.

Miles has written many R packages which make our lives easier, including my personal favourites, datapasta and paint. He has presented at many conferences and user groups including rstudio::conf(2019), WOMBAT 2019 and Runapp.