We’re entering the final stretch of another eventful year for data and machine learning professionals. Many of you are making one last push to learn new skills, catch up with recent research, or prepare for your next career move before the holiday season really kicks in in many parts of…

With the constant buzz around new tools and cutting-edge models, it’s easy to lose sight of a basic truth: the real value in leveraging data lies in its ability to bring about tangible positive change. …

For several years, the intersection of text and data stayed (more or less) within the realm of natural language processing (NLP) — the wide range of machine learning tasks that leverage textual data for prediction, classification, and recommendation tools. The rise of large language models has introduced a host of…

From effective storytelling to strategic career-planning, the skills you need in order to progress in your data science career are varied and increasingly interdisciplinary. Unlike, say, stats or programming, these are also areas where structured educational environments, like degree programs or bootcamps, can only get you so far. Fortunately, TDS…

We have a soft spot for long, thorough guides here at TDS—but we also appreciate focused posts targeting specific challenges and pain points that data scientists face in their day-to-day work. To celebrate these highly useful and practical articles, this week’s Variable turns the spotlight on recent highlights from our…

Data Science is a fast-moving field, with new tools constantly emerging, workflows evolving, and career paths changing rapidly—sometimes within the span of mere weeks. Our most-read and -discussed articles reflect these trends, with readers flocking to excellent articles by data and ML professional who have insights to share based on…

Being a “beginner” isn’t a finite state you pass through once and leave behind forever. As long as you’re committed to continuous learning and growth, you’ll find yourself grappling with new concepts and ideas years (even decades!) into your career. That’s a good thing—as long as you have solid guidance…

When accessible large language models first came on the scene, the excitement was impossible to miss: beyond their sheer novelty, they came with the promise to completely transform numerous fields and lines of work. Almost a year after the launch of ChatGPT, we’re far more aware of LLMs’ limitations, and…

Getting a handle on the current state of machine learning is tricky: on the one hand, it takes time to catch up with foundational concepts and methods, even if you’ve worked in the field for a while. On the other hand, new tools and models keep popping up at a…