An application of item-based collaborative filtering with Turicreate and Python
Whether you are responsible for user experience and product strategy in a customer centric company, or sitting in your couch watching movies with loved ones, chances are you are already aware of some ways that recommendation technology is used to personalize your content and offers.
Recommendation systems are one of the most common, easily comprehendible applications of big data and machine learning. Among the most known applications are Amazon’s recommendation engine that provides us with a personalized webpage when we visit the site, and Spotify’s recommendation list of songs when we listen using their app.
An Introduction to Self-Driving Cars (Part 3)
Previously, we discussed about why self-driving car is the future and how we got here today by looking at the history of transportation. When then dove into the backbone of self-driving software itself: how to build an HD mapping, in the second part of this Introduction to Self-Driving Cars series.
The high-definition mapping is critical in any driverless vehicle production since it enables accurate localization, helps with sensor perception and path planning, all to improve safety and comfort of the driver and riders. …
Follow me on this exciting journey to dive into the world of robotics and artificial intelligence, through understanding the application of self-driving cars.
Chapter 1 — Overview: Why self-driving cars are the future, and how did we get here?
Chapter 2 — HD Mapping: How to build maps as the backbone of self-driving cars
Chapter 3 — Localization: What is localization, where to start, and what do we need in order to know exactly where our vehicle is?
Chapter 4 — Perception: How do self-driving cars experience of the world around them? …
On HD Mapping — an Introduction to Self-Driving Cars (Part 2)
The ability to get from one place to another, anywhere in the country, is one of the most remarkable gifts of our modern technology. Maps represent the real world on a much smaller scale. They help us travel from one location to another. They help us organize information when we plan for trips. They present us information about the world in a simple, visual way.
Maps are so useful that our dependence on automated directions like Google Maps has quite eroded our ability to navigate for ourselves — at least for me. GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate to within a…
An Introduction to Self-Driving Cars (Part 1)
When I first helped the Autopilot team at Tesla in launching our Full Self-Driving beta release last year, I had never felt so close to the quality of our customers’ experience. Working alongside engineers who fought so hard for and cared the most about everyone’s safety, I could not help but imagine what the world would be like in 5 to 10 years from now when autonomous driving becomes the norm.
There will always be issues to fix and features to improve, but the indescribable thrill of having experienced the self-driving software firsthand might be well-compared to that when we…
A Beginner’s Guide to OKRs
During the first few years of my journey as a software engineer and a data scientist, I have watched good, ambitious goals and projects crashed with a little or no use despite months of development. Making sure we set and achieve high-impact goals is a critical responsibility at the start of the project cycle. One framework I came across, that has successfully been adopted by a variety of industries from high-tech companies like Google and Netflix to retail startups like Allbirds is the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) concept.
The OKRs (objectives and key results) can help you achieve your…
The most invaluable qualities I learned from the best manager I’ve worked with.
When I first plunged into the self-driving industry, I didn’t know what I signed up for. Insert the following into the picture:
- engineering problems with solutions not yet invented, which can make work always exciting and full of challenges
- a hyper-intense environment with long hours, which can make work feel nonstop (read: soul-sucking)
- highly competitive individuals and inevitable politics at work, which can make things a bit too brutal and cut-throat
- an endless sense of impostor syndrome (excuse my personal rant)
This working environment though, was a true test of strength and depth of anyone’s character as soon as they…
I’d like to dedicate this Valentine’s day to someone I recently got to know better. Like all great love stories, our relationship did not start out easy. Despite all the fairytales you’ve heard, it wasn’t love at first sight. In fact, it was rough for so many years. How we met is a blur, but we had great memories. Over time, instead of seeing the good, the potential, and how I could fall in love with this person, I decided to make our relationship complicated. I demanded highly and sabotaged this relationship many times without ever appreciating it for what…
Why Plotly is a great exploratory tool for data scientists
In the past two years working in the tech industry as a data scientist, I have used a variety of exploratory tools to build web apps for both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Plotly, among many others, is a graphing library designed especially for data scientists, engineers, and programmers to easily visualize trends in their data using Python, R, Matlab, or Javascript.
There are definitely other tools out there that can help you plot your data, such as Matplotlib, Seaborn, Bokeh, and even D3 if you want to build a visualization dashboard like those popularized by New York Times web pages.
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I left my blue seat across from JFK C66 gate to head back to San Fransisco, a place I have called home for the past fifteen months. It’s still so hard to leave the City every time I come visit, but this time I made a conscious decision to let go of the past. I am moving on.
That weekend felt less like a vacation trip and more of a proper closure for my life chapter in New York City, at least for now. I was surrounded by closest friends whom I consider like a family of my own. I…
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Musings about life, engineering, and anything in between.
