Good morning friends!
I haven’t got anything groundbreaking or witty to say today, so let’s just get straight into this edition. 😅
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There is a quote this week that really struck a chord with me. It was from the American investor and entrepreneur Naval Ravikant, and it went:
It’s not 10,000 hours, it’s 10,000 iterations.
The 10,000-hour concept comes from the book Outliers (affiliate) by Malcolm Gladwell. The message is that it takes 10,000 hours to get “successful” or “master” a certain skill. What is “success” or “mastery” of a skill means different things for different people, but you get the general premise.
An example in the book was that Bill Gates spent hours coding in his formative years developing that skill. This time invested when he was young most likely helped him build Microsoft.
However, Ravikant takes this one step further and says that it is specifically 10,000 iterations that lead to mastery. It’s not necessarily all about the volume of time, but the number of reps you put into a specific task.
I completely agree with this statement. Simply putting in the time does not mean you are deliberately practicing the skill you want to get good at. Just because you read loads of data science textbooks does not mean you will be a good data scientist. It is only through consistent hands-on practice you get good.
Now, this is the attitude we need to take to become better data scientists. As we just said, we need consistent repetitions to get truly good at something, so we need to put in consistent effort. This is especially true if you want to specialize in a certain area.
The other important thing is that 10,000 iterations take a long time. This should indicate that getting good at a skill is a long game, you shouldn't expect immediate rewards.
What’s Been Cooking 🥘
Some tasty stories this week:
OpenAI Sora — OpenAI has released another game-changing model. This week they launched Sora, which converts text into video.
Karpathy Quits OpenAI — Leading AI researcher Andrej Karpathy has left OpenAI this week, he was also a co-founder.
Improved ChatGPT Memory — ChatGPT will now have a memory that persists over several chats, giving you more bespoke responses.
Weekly Favourites ❤️
✏️ Article — Rebuilding the Portfolio that Got Me a Data Scientist Job. I am currently in the slow process of learning web development to build my website. Matt gave me loads of ideas for the design and approach I should take for my site.
🎬 YouTube — Internet Made Coder. A useful YouTube channel for those wanting to break into programming. I really like Tuomas’ short and snappy video style.
🎬 YouTube — Sundas Khalid. Another super useful data science-focused channel. Sundas has great tips and advice for budding data scientists.
(PS: Some links are affiliate links that I get a kickback from with no extra cost to you 😎)