Last week’s (Feb 18) interesting reads: Delta Lake, Visualizing Machine learning, other helpful visualization tools, and concept of social proof.
Sharing some of last week’s interesting reads and concepts: Delta Lake, Visualizing Machine learning, other helpful visualization tools, and concept of social proof.
Data engineering
The topic of Delta Lake merits its own blog post which I’m planning to write in the near future. In summary, Delta lake is a data file format that introduces some of the popular database features to the big data ecosystem. This youtube series is a great place to start learning about Delta Lake. And if you’re curious how popular Delta lake is as compared to other similar formats (iceberg, hudi, etc.), Gary has published an interesting article here (Though unfortunately you could be hitting the Medium paywall)
What is Delta Lake? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F91G4RoA8is
How popular is Delta Lake (@GaryStafford)? https://garystafford.medium.com/data-lake-table-formats-interest-and-adoption-rate-40817b87be9e
Machine learning
I’ve always been fascinated by machine learning topics, particularly in the field of deep learning and, more specifically, visualizing what deep learning models are learning. It feels like brain surgery to watch the inner workings of deep-learning models. To see how machines learn human language, click the link below. And, if you’re like me and are always eager to learn more about this field, I came across an excellent lesson on the principles of linear algebra, which is an important subject if you’re studying from the ground up. I’ve also been interested in learning more about the performance differences between different GPUs. The Twitter post linked below does an excellent job of comparing several GPUs.
Visualizing sequence-2-sequence natural language processing model: https://t.co/vK6WIHruFp
GPU comparisons (@marktenenholtz): https://twitter.com/marktenenholtz/status/1493570809339658243
Machine learning tutorial: https://pabloinsente.github.io/intro-linear-algebra
Random Topics
Recursion has always been an uncomfortable topic for me but visualizing things makes the concept much easier. To that end I found a tool to help visualize python recursion. Another interesting visualization tool is Google cloud’s architecture diagram tool. Not only does it helps with building architecture diagrams, it also allows you to deploy the architecture right from the tool. It’s a very interesting feature and I hope I get to play with it soon.
Visualizing recursion on python: https://ecursionvisualizer.com
Architecture diagram tool: https://goo.gle/3LArk3T
Interesting concept
A random interesting concept I read recently: Social proof
When unsure how to act, people copy others, outsourcing their decisions. When Sylvan Goldman invented shopping trolleys, people didn’t want to use them because they seemed silly. So Goldman paid actors to use trolleys in his stores, and everyone quickly followed.
