Ken's Nearest Neighbors

Today I had the pleasure of welcoming back  @Shashank Kalanithi . Shashank is the reigning iron analyst, a data analyst turned senior data engineer, a youtuber that now has over 100,000 subscribers and a good friend. In this episode we talk about how technology can be one of the great equalizers for inequality, how he was able to 6x his income through this field over the last 4 years, and about hi...

DJ is an educational content creator on YouTube who covers Machine Learning relating topics, from Reinforcement Learning to Information Theory. As a Data Scientist at Lyft, he's successfully pushed for Causal Forecasting as the best mechanism for company-wide planning. He would argue it's the only valid data-driven approach to planning. His graduate education is formally in financial eng...

Jeremy Frank is the creator of the Twitter account @MLBRandomStats which has amassed nearly 100,000 followers. He's currently studying data science at Purdue University, and has previously interned at Sports Reference (creators of Baseball Reference, Basketball Reference, etc.) and for the Houston Astros working in their research and development team. In addition, he is known for co-creating...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Patrick Akil. Patrick is a software engineer, consultant, and host of the  @Beyond Coding Podacst. In this episode we learn about Patrick’s unique view on taking risks early in your career, we also learn some best practices for having difficult communication with your bosses and peers, and finally we learn about the very opportunistic way he was able to bec...

Today I had the pleasure of iterviewing Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic who was introduced to me via my good friend and podcast guest  @Luke Barousse .  Cole tells stories with data. She is Storytelling With Data CEO and author of the forthcoming book "storytelling with you: plan, create, and deliver a stellar presentation" and best-selling books "storytelling with data: let’s practice!&quo...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Dmitri Mirakyan. Dmitri Dmitri runs the consumer product analytics team at Opendoor. Prior to that, he was a data scientist, analyst, and a consultant at Deloitte. He is passionate about data viz and finding 80/20 solutions to open-ended problems. Outside of work, he enjoys building questionably useful side projects and going fast on motorcycles or skis. In...

Today I had  @Keith Galli back on the KNN podcast for round 2! Since our last talk, he left his startup to pursue YouTube and data science contracting full time. We talk about balancing our work, finding motivation, and maximizing our habits in this exciting episode!  Keith's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithgalli/?hl=en

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Thomas Watkins. Thomas is a thought leader in the User Experience space, a speaker and industry practitioner located in Houston TX.  He is a life-long learner who has a passion for bringing greater clarity to the world.  Thomas has made it his career’s focus to combine technology with design psychology in order to drive business success. He specializes in h...

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with  @Data with Zach , a Staff Data Engineer at Air BNB. Zach is best known for his radical transparency about his salary over his career and the other amazing content that he shares on LinkedIn. Today we discuss his controversial posts, what money means to him in the scope of his career, and what he has learned from an incredibly fast career progression. We a...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing  @StatQuest with Josh Starmer   for a second time! We talked about his new book: "The statquest illustrated guide to machine learning", his love for cooking, and what he learned about collaboration through the trip at the #brightdatahouse!  Josh's first time on the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDrPSKbsWWo&ab_channel=Ken%27sNea...

Had the honor of chatting with  @Luke Barousse and  @Alex The Analyst at the same time this week at the #brightdatahouse! It was fascinating to hear about how they create content differently with different constraints on their time. It was also great to hear about the specific things they learned from being around so many other creators! 

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing the incredible  @Miki Bazeley - The MLOps Engineer for the second time!  Watch the first interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii2Qo5pwWho&ab_channel=Ken%27sNearestNeighborsPodcast . We dive into everything ML ops in this episode. What is it, what is the future of it, and how can you break into it. We also touch on cultural differences and the...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Shailvi Wakhlu. Shailvi is the Sr. Director of Data at Strava, where she leads a large team of product analysts and machine learning engineers to enable data-informed product improvements in support of Strava Athletes. In the past, she worked at Salesforce, Fitbit, and multiple other data-rich companies, in addition to previously running her own company. As...

Today I switched it up a bit and took some anonymous questions from you all! If you want to ask more, use this link: https://ngl.link/kenjee_ds ! I cover topics around data science, my lifestyle, and content. If you like this one, I will do another next week, then back to regular content! 

Jared Dean is a data scientist SAS and an adjunct professor at Duke University. Jared is the mastermind behind the batting lab at SAS that was the topic of one of my most recent videos. In this conversation, we learn about common misconceptions about statistics, why he left a management role to go back to an individual contributor position, and of course the whole story behind the SAS batting lab....

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Breylor Grout. Breylor is a data analyst who has built his work lifestyle around his full time competitive Jiu Jitsu career. He was born and raised in San Diego, and graduated from Cal Poly Saint louis obispo in 2017 with a major in math with minor in statistics. Since graduating he’s been putting more and more time into Brazilian jiu jitsu, which he has be...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Thu Vu. Thu is a Data Science Consultant with 5+ years of experience in data analytics + data science. She has a background in Economics and Computer Science, focused on building tools to communicate data insights. She also creates videos on her YouTube channel to share advice and help newcomers in Data Science develop their skills. In this episode we learn...

 Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Ian Greengross. Ian is my friend, a business partner, and a sports agent with over 25 years of experience. He represents: NFL players, football coaches, hockey coaches and now data scientists. In this episode, we learn about how Ian uses data in his work as a sports agent, and how even late in his career he is finding joy in programming. Special thanks to...

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Li for the second time on the podcast (Episode 24). Jeff is a good friend of mine and we are currently working on two machine learning courses together. He came to visit me in person to do some recording. While he was here, we sat down and talked about life, data science, books, and the future. Jeff has what many consider to be a dream data science job, he i...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Kristen Kehrer. Kristen is currently a Developer Advocate at Comet sharing about MLOps best practices.  Since 2010, Kristen has been delivering innovative and actionable machine learning solutions across multiple industries, including the utilities, healthcare, and eCommerce.  Kristen was a LinkedIn Top Voice - Data Science & Analytics in 2018. Previous...

Quincy Larson is the founder of freeCodeCamp. A Non-Profit with a mission to make learning to code free to everyone. Currently over 40,000 freeCodeCamp graduates have gotten jobs in tech. Quincy worked as a teacher and a school director for a decade before learning to code at hackathons and makerspaces around California. He enjoys reading history books, taking his kids to the park, and trying to t...

Today is the 100th episode of the KNN podcast! I wanted to do something special for this monumental occasion. Taking a page out of  @Lex Fridman 's book, I brought my dad Art Jee in for an interview. This may sound like a weird choice since he is an oral surgeon and has very little to do directly with the data domain, but honestly, this conversation is one of the most meaningful ones I’ve had...

In this week's episode I brought back two of my friends and previous guests of the show: Tina Huang & Luke Barousse. I spent the last 2 weeks with them in Arkansas & Texas. In this episode we talk about what we learned from collaborating on content and seeing each others working styles. We also learn about what Tina thinks about the American south and Luke's country accent. 

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Hunter Kempf. Hunter is a Data Scientist at Cloudflare, a Z by HP Global Data Science Ambassador and is finishing up his Masters in Cybersecurity from Georgia Tech. He completed his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and went on to work at AT&T in a variety of data roles over the course of 4 years while earn...

Zach Wilson is a tech lead at Airbnb and a content creator on LinkedIn with over 150k followers. He is passionate about data engineering and mental health. He also has an awesome YouTube channel, Data with Zach, where he teaches people about data and data engineering. In this episode, Zach explains what it means to be a tech lead, a position that I was personally confused about, how he was able to...