alex petralia

2024

2024-03-12 ChatGPT and the newfound accessibility of unstructured data data
2024-02-21 Why doesn't data engineering feel like software engineering? data

2023

2023-05-22 The Presentation Layer: Extracting insights from the data (Part 10) data
2023-05-07 The Semantic Layer: Know Your Data, or KYD (Part 9) data
2023-04-26 The Warehouse Layer: Database administration in a modern data warehouse (Part 8) data
2023-04-17 The Warehouse Layer: Transforming data with dbt (Part 7) data
2023-04-07 The Warehouse Layer: A short history of data warehousing (Part 6) data
2023-04-05 The Transit Layer: Data integrations & data connectors (Part 5) data
2023-03-23 The Sources Layer: Schema-first versus schema-last paradigms (Part 4) data
2023-03-17 How to build a reliable, useful and performant data infrastructure (Part 3) data
2023-03-14 The architecture of a data infrastructure (Part 2) data
2023-03-07 What is a data infrastructure and why do you need one? (Part 1) data
2023-03-01 We have data and we have models; now what? (Part 12) data
2023-02-25 Statistics only gives correlations, so what about causation? (Part 11) data
2023-02-20 The myopia of metrics: when models go wrong (Part 10) data
2023-02-13 What does it mean for a model to “scale”? (Part 9) data
2023-02-09 Why people prefer simple, explainable models (Part 8) data
2023-02-07 What makes a model "accurate"? (Part 7) data
2023-02-04 What are “models of reality”? (Part 6) data
2023-02-01 Data processing, from instrument to analytic resolution (Part 5) data
2023-01-31 What does it mean for data to be “precise”? (Part 4) data
2023-01-27 Meetings which pay the rent productivity
2023-01-25 How do we know if data is "correct"? (Part 3) data
2023-01-22 What is a data record? Resolution and the unique key (Part 2) data
2023-01-19 What is data, and where does it come from? (Part 1) data
2023-01-19 Working with data from start to finish (Intro) data best
2023-01-18 What makes a leader versus just a manager? management

2022

2022-05-16 On taking mental health days well-being

2021

2021-01-05 Why write, and how you can improve at it communication epistemology best

2019

2019-10-26 Building a webapp to visualize DMV wait times product
2019-10-14 Product managers solve the problem of not delivering products product
2019-10-14 Managers solve the problem of coordination failure management
2019-10-14 A practical example of product management product
2019-08-19 Causality, causal opacity, plausible deniability, cherry-picking concepts
2019-07-15 Complete contracts, the principal-agent problem, asymmetric information concepts
2019-07-01 Underdetermination, Gödel's incompleteness theorems concepts
2019-06-17 Agency, externalization concepts best
2019-06-03 Stress, inflammation, intelligence concepts
2019-05-20 Organized complexity, kayfabe, workism concepts
2019-04-22 Wabi-sabi, aphantasia concepts
2019-04-08 Eastern philosophy (part 2) concepts best
2019-03-18 Complexity engineering concepts
2019-02-25 Training & motivation, team performance, non-financial compensation concepts
2019-02-22 What makes a great conversation? relationships best
2019-02-04 Abstract thinking, leaky abstractions, the high-ground maneuver concepts
2019-01-14 Fairness, rule-breaking concepts

2018

2018-12-31 The just-world phenomenon, schadenfreude, mudita concepts
2018-12-17 Chesterton's fence, causality concepts
2018-11-19 Antifragility (part 2) concepts
2018-11-01 To be persuasive, you need more than logic communication
2018-10-29 Antifragility (part 1) concepts
2018-10-15 Death, cyclicality concepts
2018-10-01 Emptiness, impermanence concepts
2018-09-17 Eastern philosophy concepts
2018-09-03 Play concepts
2018-08-20 The prisoner's dilemma, the ultimatum game, a keynesian beauty contest concepts
2018-08-06 Single-shot games & zero-sum games concepts
2018-07-23 Status is good, as long as you don't identify with it well-being
2018-07-23 A market for lemons, signaling concepts
2018-07-09 Emergent order, regime switches, chaotic behavior concepts
2018-06-25 Nonlinearity, contagion, feedback loops concepts
2018-06-11 Complex adaptive systems concepts
2018-05-28 Complex systems concepts
2018-05-14 Hanlon's razor, coalition building concepts
2018-04-30 Shift gears when the initial approach yields little information productivity
2018-04-30 Optimization, hill climbing, simulated annealing, the explore/exploit tradeoff concepts
2018-04-16 Cities and ambitions, the submarine, negotiating concepts
2018-04-02 Deep relationships concepts relationships
2018-03-30 Use heuristics for the middle of a distribution, not for the tails epistemology
2018-03-19 Crash-only software, seating charts, loneliness, learning to learn concepts
2018-03-17 Why postmodernism superseded modernism epistemology best
2018-03-05 Coase's nature of the firm concepts
2018-02-24 Writing imposes structure and rigor upon my beliefs epistemology
2018-02-22 Most beliefs we hold are inherited, not evaluated epistemology
2018-02-19 Pace layers & the Hegelian dialectic concepts
2018-02-05 Extremizing algorithm, Metcalfe's law concepts
2018-01-22 Spheres of exchange, the fallacy of mood affiliation, soft power concepts
2018-01-08 The fundamental attribution error, pain + reflection = progress concepts

2017

2017-12-31 How I remember thoughts from my showers misc
2017-12-25 The Feynman technique, disregard!, and Google search tricks concepts
2017-12-11 The fallacy of parsimony, kaizen, the half-life of facts concepts
2017-11-27 Decision hyperparameters concepts
2017-11-25 For alpha, be informed and risk-seeking; otherwise, stick with beta risk best
2017-11-13 The helpful hierarchy and kairos concepts
2017-11-05 When logic binds you to change your own behavior logic
2017-10-30 Servant leadership & resilience engineering concepts
2017-10-29 Pursue intrinsic, not extrinsic, sources of motivation well-being
2017-10-16 Risk & return, hyperglycemia, statistical significance, corporate diversity concepts
2017-10-15 If something is "risky", consider its distribution risk
2017-10-02 Cultural imprinting, conspicuous consumption, costly signaling, the aspirational self concepts
2017-09-18 Dialectical thinking, memento mori, the 60/40 rule, tax avoidance concepts
2017-09-06 I am at war with multitasking productivity
2017-09-04 "Smart" people must also be open-minded epistemology
2017-07-19 Preventing common analytical errors: Join duplicates and join misses data
2017-07-03 Always learn the shortcuts productivity
2017-06-26 Learn just enough Linux to get things done data
2017-06-08 Technical skills every business analyst should have data
2017-04-13 Why a simple average is the most frequently miscalculated statistic (Part 2) data
2017-04-11 Why a simple average is the most frequently miscalculated statistic (Part 1) data

2016

2016-08-09 The data pipeline: A practical, end-to-end example of processing data (Part 3) data
2016-06-22 The data pipeline: How the sausage gets made (Part 2) data
2016-06-22 The data pipeline: Data science doesn't mean data science (Part 1) data
2016-06-08 You should use DBeaver as your database IDE data

2015

2015-12-14 Google's OpenRefine works great with messy, survey-like data - and that's it data

2013

2013-11-01 Does modern society have place for honour anymore? economics