What a fantastic read from Camuffo, Cordova and Gambardella! If you haven’t read A Scientific Approach to Entrepreneurial Experimentation, you’re missing out. It’s a great read. And not only because it reinforces my own preexisting biases, but also because there are challenging bits in there. The core finding is “We find that entrepreneurs that behave like scientists perform better, pivot to a greater extent to a new idea, and do not dropout less than the control group in the early stages of the startup.” The authors focus on a key behaviour that scientists exhibit. A scientist has two types of skepticism – skepticism that something is true, and skepticism that something is not true. Those represent two types of error, helpfully[…]

There are a few more experiments coming to christopherberry.ca for 2019. The optimization objective of this set of activities is the same that it was a decade ago: to become a better communicator. I’ve shared a set of new challenges for the data scientist in the January-February issue of Analytics Magazine. I’ll spend part of this year expanding on some of the challenges that I’m running into as they emerge, and leaving a metatag for them. I’ll be posting more series. Last year, in response to a massive, dramatic, thread on slack, I wrote a five part series on the basics of organizing for data science. People find these useful years after they’re posted. (It’s been seven years since I[…]

We visited Cusco January 28 to February 2, 2019, and visited Machu Picchu on January 31. These notes are intended for Canadians thinking about visiting during low season. Getting There: The Flight Air Canada Rouge has a direct flight from Toronto to Lima. Avianca, of the Star Alliance, operates the route from Lima to Cusco. You could check out Miraflores for the food before heading to Lima. Cusco airport is hot, high, and relies on visual approach. If you’re visiting during the low season, there can be delays and cancellations if the pilot can’t see the runway because of fog. The flight to Cusco is short – at less than 80 minutes. The landing is beautiful and you’ll experience a[…]