Published in Towards Data Science·May 2, 2021The Metric System: How to Correctly Measure Your ModelThe deep dive into the world of model assessment metrics that you didn’t know you needed to know — until now — The code used to generate the graphs and the KS Area Between Curves computation in this post is available as part of the dython library Here’s a classic scenario you probably ran into as a Data Scientist — you need to train a binary classifier, say a simple logistic regression…Machine Learning11 min read
Jan 23, 2021Why COVID-19 Vaccines Are a Requiem for Humanity“We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests” — One of my favorite movies as a kid was Independence Day (here in Israel it was known as The Third Day, as it takes place on July 4th, and, well, most of the world doesn’t celebrate independency on that day). Briefly, it tells the story of an alien invasion to…Covid 194 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Dec 22, 2020How I Keep Up with the Latest Innovations in AI and MLBreaking down my reading list of what’s new in the AI world — The field of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence is changing rapidly. Five years ago, classical Machine Learning was the hottest trend; now it’s just like an iPhone 6S — outdated. …Artificial Intelligence4 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Sep 20, 2020Yes, You Can: How to Kickstart Your Career as a Data ScientistAnswering frequently asked questions by junior data scientists and data scientists-to-be about first steps towards a DS career — In case you missed it, there’s a pandemic out there, and it forces all of us to shut down all public events. As time goes by, we all begin to understand the impact of the lockdowns, social distancing and absence of gatherings. …Data Science7 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Apr 9, 2020How to Build Your First Python PackageMake your awesome code conveniently available to the world, because you’re awesome too — This blogpost is now available in Polish too, read it on BulldogJob.pl About two years ago I published my very first data-science related blogpost. It was about Categorical Correlations, and I honestly thought no-one will find it useful. It was just experimental, and for myself. 1.7K …Programming8 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Mar 30, 2020Hard ROC: Really Understanding & Properly Using ROC and AUCLearn how to use ROC curves and AUC scores for more than just saying “I think this model performs well” — The ROC graphs generating code used in this post is available as part of the dython library, which can be found on my GitHub page. Examples seen in this post are also available as a notebook. Assessing the predictions of any machine-learning model is probably the most important task of…Machine Learning7 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Nov 24, 2019Qrash Course II: From Q-Learning to Gradient Policy & Actor-Critic in 12 MinutesTaking another step towards truly understanding the basics of Reinforcement Learning — Implementations of all algorithms discussed in this blogpost can be found on my GitHub page. The Qrash Course Series: Part 1: Introduction to Reinforcement Learning and Q-Learning Part 2: Policy Gradients and Actor-Critic The previous — and first — Qrash Course post took us from knowing pretty much nothing about…Machine Learning12 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Nov 11, 2019Performing Exploration, Robin-Hood StyleHow to perform valuable exploration for brand new items with nothing more than a simple trick on our items’ embeddings — This blog post was originally published on Taboola’s Engineering Blog. Our core business at Taboola is to provide the surfers-of-the-web with personalized content recommendations wherever they might surf. We do so using state of the art Deep Learning methods, which learn what to display to each user from our growing…Machine Learning6 min read
Jun 6, 2019Going Old-School: Designing Algorithms for Fast Weighted Sampling in ProductionWhen interview-like challenges attack in real life, we save the day with math! — This blog post was originally published on Taboola’s Engineering Blog. If you happen to write code for a living, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve found yourself explaining another interviewer again how to reverse a linked list or how to tell if a string contains only digits. Usually, the necessity…Algorithms9 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Apr 27, 2019Open Minded AI: Improving Performance by Keeping All Options on the TableHow I made my Reinforcement Learning agent perform better by making it stop going naively after the highest reward — The Tic-Tac-Toe game described in this post, as well as all algorithms and pre-trained models can be found on the tic_tac_toe repository on my GitHub page. When I’m being asked to describe what fascinates me so much about Reinforcement Learning, I usually explain that I see it as if I…Machine Learning6 min read
