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Optimizing Postgres Queries at Scale
2021-12-28
Note: This post was originally published on heap’s blog Heap is a product analytics tool that automatically captures web and mobile behavior like page views, clicks, and taps. We’re operating at a scale of billions of events per day, which we store across a distributed Postgres cluster. Heap’s thousands of customers can build queries in the Heap UI to answer almost any question about how users are using their product.…
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How and When to Control for Confounders During Product Usage Analyses
2021-06-12
Note: This post was originally published on heap’s blog We all know that correlation isn’t causation, but when we’re assessing the impact of a feature we’ve just shipped or searching for an “aha moment” that leads to better retention, it’s easy to forget this. It’s tempting to look at the increased conversion rates of users who did X versus users who didn’t, and conclude that our feature is working or that we’ve found the “aha moment.…
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Analyzing Traffic Fatalities by Vehicle Weight and Size with Tidyverse
2020-07-03
I bought a car recently. I’m cheap and practical and I’m going to be a father soon, so the only things I really cared about were: will the car keep my wife and child safe if they’re in an accident will the car keep running reliably how do I get 👆 those two things on the cheap I’ve also been getting into machine learning and data science recently, so I thought it’d be useful to answer them using some data science tools.…
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Should we refactor files we're working on?
2020-05-09
When programming, always follow the camping rule: Always leave the code base healthier than when you found it. — Martin Fowler, Refactoring The Boy Scouts of America have a simple rule that we can apply to our profession. Leave the campground cleaner than you found it. — Robert Martin, Clean Code Many of us share the attitude expressed by the above Fowler and Martin quotes. The attitude presumes that code we’re working on now will change again soon, and we’ll reap the benefits of a refactor when that happens.…
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Why PMs Should Study Statistics: An Interactive Essay
2019-06-02
Marty Cagan – seasoned product manager and author of a book and blog that makes practically every recommended reading list for new product managers – says that there are two academic courses that “every product manager should take”: finance and computer science. In this interactive essay, I suggest we add another course to this list: statistics. A strong understanding of statistics facilitates three key responsibilities of product managment: understanding analytics, implementing cooprorate change, and making accurate forecasts.…