Web scraping is frequently used when no suitable public data can be found in a structured format. Unstructured or semi-structured data served on static websites or web applications can be scraped programmatically and structured for analysis. But before reaching for... [Read More]

Kaggle is a popular online platform for data science competitions. Competition hosts can post their data online, and data scientist from around the world compete to build the best algorithm for the host’s needs. [Read More]

Machine learning models are frequently used to make predictions about a target variable, such as the sales price of a home. However, we can use a fitted model to do much more than to predict – by carefully inspecting a... [Read More]

In this post I introduce the Company Vector, a distributed representation of a company’s core business activities. Company vectors are learned from business descriptions found in public SEC 10-K filings using an unsupervised learning algorithm called the Paragraph Vector. The... [Read More]

Last week I decided to migrate this blog, Eight Portions, from GitHub Pages to GitLab Pages for hosting service. My experience to-date has been net positive: GitLab Pages offers more flexibility and control over your site than does GitHub Pages,... [Read More]