How to find out if you can upgrade your laptop

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April 2, 2019

How to find out if you can upgrade your laptop

ou’ve had your laptop for a few years and it’s starting to feel sluggish when you’re running demanding tasks. Maybe your RAM is just not up to snuff, or your old spinning-disk hard drive is starting to falter. It’s time to upgrade! But instead of replacing the entire laptop, you might be able to swap out some bits inside to breath in some new life.

Products used in this guide

Check if you can upgrade with Crucial

Unfortunately, unlike desktop PCs which you can normally upgrade, laptops are increasingly sealed units that may have certain limitations when it comes to accessing the insides and tinkering with what’s contained within the chassis. Actually gazing at specific components is one thing, being able to remove said chips and boards and replace with enhanced replacements is a completely different ball game.

The most common upgrades these days in laptops are RAM and storage drives. The latter is a recommended task on machines that sport a mechanical drive, which can be upgraded to a vastly superior SSD solution. The same goes for RAM when the total amount available to Windows and applications is 4GB. Moving up to 8GB or even 16GB can really boost productivity and multi-tasking.

We’d avoid touching anything else inside most laptops, such as the Wi-Fi card or CPU, unless you absolutely know what you’re doing and are sure everything is compatible. The easiest way to see just what you’ll be able to do with the laptop is to look on the manufacturer’s website or open up the PC and take a look inside. The latter usually involves removing a number of screws on the underside, but be sure to check with the manual (or online guides) for further details.

If you want to be certain you’ll be upgrading using the correct parts, Crucial — which sells branded RAM and SSDs — has a handy tool available that can quickly check if you’re able to upgrade the memory or storage in thousands of laptop models.

Head to Crucial’s website.
Select the manufacturer of your laptop.© Provided by Axel Ltd Co d/b/a Mobile Nations
Choose the product family.
Select the model of your particular laptop.
Hit “Find upgrade”.

The tool should return results as to what type of RAM your laptop supports and whether an SSD upgrade is in on the cards. Crucial will, of course, recommend its own products for you to use (we highly recommend the brand), but you can use alternatives from other companies, so long as you match up specifications. Be wary when it comes to SSDs as there are multiple available. The same goes for RAM with regards to DDR2, DDR3 and DDR4.

It’s also worth noting that you’ll need to clone the old drive to continue using your Windows installation on the new storage solution. That or you can re-install Windows on the new storage drive to start fresh.

Our top equipment picks

For upgrades, take a look at our recommended options. Be sure to double check for compatibility, but this is what you should be aiming for in terms of capacity and speeds — so long as your laptop can support such component upgrades.

Best M.2 SSD

Samsung 970 EVO Plus

$128 at Amazon (500GB)

Insane performance at an affordable price

Samsung has long been at the forefront of the SSD market and its latest is certainly the greatest, with an incredible performance backed up with a great warranty and reliability.

Samsung did something incredible with the 970 EVO Plus, offering performance that matches (even supersedes) the 970 PRO but without the insane price tag. The 970 EVO Plus is based on Samsung’s latest 96-layer V NAND memory, and with prices starting at less than $100 for the 256GB storage capacity, this is an extremely enticing SSD.

Value SSD

Western Digital Blue

$120 at Amazon (1TB)

Great performance and value

WD took full advantage of 3D NAND technology and came up with the latest iteration of Blue SSDs.

Sporting 560 MB/s and 530 MB/s for read and write speeds, the 1TB version of the Western Digital Blue SSD offers great value. Not only do you have a choice of capacity for 2.5-inch drives, but there are also M.2 modules to choose from.

Compact RAM

Corsair Vengeance 16GB Kit

$90 at Amazon (16GB)

16GBs of compact and speedy memory

Crucial memory is both reliable and affordable. This 16GB kit will ensure your laptop has more than enough RAM to run multiple apps simultaneously and even tackle some of those more demanding PC games.

Upgrading from 4GB or 8GB of RAM, your laptop will feel quicker and more powerful with a 16GB kit like this example from Crucial installed. You’ll be able to run numerous tabs on your favorite browser, play even more demanding games (so long as you have a decent GPU) and avoid sluggish performance.

Additional Equipment

You’ll need a toolkit to take apart your laptop to replace components. We’ve got you covered with this handy recommendation.

Everything you need

Yougai 38-piece

$13 at Amazon

Sometimes you don’t need countless screwdriver tips, a brush, cable cutter, among other tools. This is what makes the Yougai toolkit more appealing for someone who won’t be tinkering with hardware too often.

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What’s new on Coursera for Business – February and March 2019

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April 2, 2019

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What’s new on Coursera for Business – February and March 2019

We launched 97 new courses in February and March of this year, including 13 courses in Arabic, 10 in Spanish, and 11 in Russian.

Here are our top ten courses in English from the past two months:

AI For Everyone, deeplearning.ai – AI is not only for engineers. If you want your organization to become better at using AI, this is the course to tell everyone–especially your non-technical colleagues–to take.
Innovation and emerging technology: Be disruptive, Macquarie University – ‘Disruption’ has become a buzz word in the business world. But what is a disruptive change-maker? In this course you will learn how to deploy disruptive strategic thinking to develop or protect your organisation’s competitive advantage.
Introduction to TensorFlow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning, deeplearning.ai – If you are a software developer who wants to build scalable AI-powered algorithms, you need to understand how to use the tools to build them. This Specialization will teach you best practices for using TensorFlow, a popular open-source framework for machine learning.
State Estimation and Localization for Self-Driving Cars, University of Toronto – This course will introduce you to the different sensors and how we can use them for state estimation and localization in a self-driving car.
Decision Criteria & Applications, University of Michigan – This course is an introduction to decision-making criteria widely used in the real world and will help you understand the foundational principles of how most organizations make decisions.
Visual Perception for Self-Driving Cars, University of Toronto – This course will introduce you to the main perception tasks in autonomous driving, static and dynamic object detection, and will survey common computer vision methods for robotic perception.
Time Value of Money, University of Michigan – This course is an introduction to time value of money (TVM) and decision-making to help you understand the basics of finance.
Introduction to Supply Chain Finance & Blockchain Technology, New York Institute of Finance – What is Supply Chain Finance? How does Blockchain apply? In this course, you’ll learn about an emerging set of solutions within trade finance implemented by financial institutions, leading corporate buyers and their trading partners all over the world known as Supply Chain Finance.
Security and Privacy for Big Data – Part 1, EIT Digital – You will discover cryptographic principles, mechanisms to manage access controls in your Big Data system. By the end of the course, you will be ready to plan your next Big Data project successfully, ensuring that all security related issues are under control.
Intel® Network Academy – Network Transformation 102, Intel – Welcome to the Intel® Network Academy – a comprehensive training program on network transformation. In this program, we will be covering the topic areas of software defined infrastructure (SDI) network functions virtualization (NFV), software-defined networking (SDN) and beyond.

All Courses

Business

Technology

Data Science

Health

Language Learning

Math and Logic

Personal Development

Physical Science and Engineering

Social Sciences

Arts & Humanities

Coursera Announces Accelerated Degree Momentum at 2019 Partners Conference

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April 2, 2019

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Coursera Announces Accelerated Degree Momentum at 2019 Partners Conference

Coursera has made incredible strides in increasing access to education for learners all over the world. From open courses and Specializations to MasterTrack™ Certificates and full degree programs, we work with more than 190 top universities and industry partners to help more than 40 million learners gain the knowledge, skills, and credentials they need to succeed in their careers. Degrees continue to be the most valuable credential for career and economic mobility, and I’m proud of how the Coursera platform has been able to provide access to top quality degrees at a highly affordable cost.

Today, at our annual Partners Conference, I’m thrilled to announce two new degrees from the University of Colorado Boulder—bringing the number of degrees announced on the Coursera platform to 14. The University of Colorado Boulder will launch a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MS-EE) on Coursera and is pursuing a Master of Science in Data Science (MS-DS)*. Admission to both degrees is performance-based, so there are no prerequisites or an application. Students simply need to pass a series of courses for admission to the degree program.

It’s inspiring to see how far Coursera has come in the past year. Since our 2018 Partners Conference, we’ve launched five new degrees on the platform. In addition to the two degrees with the University of Colorado Boulder, we announced a Master of Science in Machine Learning from Imperial College London, a Global MBA from Macquarie University, and a Master of Computer and Information Technology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Coursera is also committed to providing a variety of higher education pathways to meet the diverse needs and goals of every learner. At this year’s Partners Conference, we announced an expansion of our MasterTrack™ program portfolio, including a Spatial Data Analysis and Visualization MasterTrack™ program from the University of California, Davis* that is in active development. Coursera’s MasterTrack™ program breaks portions of master’s programs into modules, so students can earn a university-issued credential online at a breakthrough price. Students who complete a MasterTrack™ program and are admitted into the university’s related master’s program can have their progress count towards the degree.

In an era of rapid change and evolving skills, degrees and credentials are key to career advancement. We look forward to continuing to work with our world-class partners to build high quality, flexible, and affordable degrees and credentials of the future.

* The Master of Science in Data Science degree is subject to final approval by the University of Colorado and the Spatial Data Analysis and Visualization MasterTrack™ program is subject to final approval by the University of California, Davis.

Ask a Data Engineer: Warby Parker Edition 👓

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April 1, 2019

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Ask a Data Engineer: Warby Parker Edition 👓

wp-header

Codecademy’s very own Nick Duckwiler (left) and Ryan Tuck from Warby Parker (right) in our office. (📷: Mitch Boyer)

Last month, Codecademy and Warby Parker came together to work on a special Learn SQL from Scratch Capstone Project. It was during this time when I met Ryan Tuck, a Data Engineer at Warby, who played a major part in this partnership. So when he decided to drop by our office for the final QA round, I had to break out my notebook and ask some questions. Enjoy.

Hey Ryan, let’s start off with a question I’ve had for a while — what is a Data Engineer? (Is it similar to a Data Analyst or a Software Engineer?)

At Warby Parker, data engineers are responsible for creating and maintaining the plumbing required to support the data and reporting needs of the business. We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.

What languages/frameworks do you use at Warby?

On data engineering, we use Python as our general purpose programming language, as do most of the other teams in our Technology department. When it comes to databases, we use PostgreSQL for the majority of our SQL needs, and are beginning to use Amazon Athena and Google BigQuery for some of our larger datasets. We use Looker as our exclusive business intelligence entry point to all of this data.

What are some of the projects you worked on?

I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of of smart people in every department at our company to help them solve their varied data needs, from reconciling financial data with the Accounting team to automating and modeling standardized performance metrics for our team of over 200 customer experience advisors.

As part of a team of five supporting the data needs of a rapidly growing company, I’ve tried where possible to focus on helping our analysts solve their own problems. This includes helping people learn Python and commit to our codebase, guiding the creation of data models in SQL, and encouraging people to submit pull requests to add features in Looker, our BI tool.

Seeing dozens of otherwise “non-technical” colleagues opening up PRs on a daily basis, and consequently being part of the democratization of tech that we value at Warby Parker, is probably the most rewarding “project” I’ve been a part of.

One project finished recently during our first annual “Hackweek” is called Pipes, which allows anyone at the company to easily move large amounts of data from wherever to wherever (Looker, Google Sheets, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, etc) on a regular cadence, or manually through a simple one-line chatbot interface. The adoption has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re looking to grow this sort of tooling out even more.

“We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.”

What got you into the data field?

I’ve always been drawn to analytical fields like math, and became pretty proficient in Excel during some internships in college. Once I had learned to program and learned more about data science and its applications in artificial intelligence, I knew that anything I could do to immerse myself in the world of data would be a step in the right direction.

Three and a half years ago, I landed a job as a junior software engineer at Warby Parker not fully knowing what I was in for, but am so glad I got the opportunity to help build tools to support an interesting and ever-changing data-driven culture here.

Where did you learn SQL and Python?

I had a background in C++, and was exposed to Python through an Intro to Data Science course. When Warby Parker hired me onto the Data team in 2015, I had never written a SQL query in my life, but picked it up quickly and within a few months started up internal SQL training classes, which I still teach on a monthly basis.

What does your tattoo say?

The ultimate cheatsheet.

This is Bayes’ Theorem, which is an equation that describes how to update probabilities given new evidence. Two summers ago I worked on building a tool to help predict weekly fantasy football performance. Some colleagues suggested a Bayesian approach would be appropriate, since there aren’t really enough data points in an NFL season to be able to use statistical approaches that require larger datasets, and I’d want to regularly update my predictions after each player’s latest performance.

I did a deep dive into understanding the (simple) math underlying Bayes’ Theorem and came out of that experience with a whole new worldview, understanding my entire knowledge of the world as a big and intricate probabilistic model that I was continuously updating with every experience I ever have. It was pretty transformative, and I figured that was worth a tattoo.

What is a concept in SQL/Python that’s essential to your work?

Donald Knuth said, “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.” I’ve generally found this to be true, and try to live by it in my work. For example, I’ll generally prefer to keep a data model simple by rebuilding it for all time on a daily basis using a single SQL query instead of making a more complicated model that requires iteratively adding to a table, keeping track of state, updated timestamps, when something last ran, etc.

A wise man once said, “Duplicating data makes things go fast,” but databases are already impressively fast to begin with, without implementing anything to improve performance. Ultimately, I almost always approach a problem thinking about optimizing for my time over machine time, for readability over performance, and for introducing as little cognitive overhead as is required by the problem at hand. Only once performance issues or readability issues present themselves will some code be worth a rewrite.

Last question! Since you wrote Warby Parker’s internal SQL training courses, I know there gotta be some inner Curriculum Developer in you. Can you teach a SQL concept in 2 minutes?

Sure! Have you ever written a query that yields some result set and you think, “I’d love to query the stuff I just produced like it was a table?” Enter the WITH clause.

Suppose I have a mega query that gives the transaction summaries:

select
    transactions.date as transaction_date,
    sum(items.price) as total_cost,
    count(*) as number_of_items
from
    transactions
inner join
    customers
    on
    customers.id = transactions.customer_id
inner join
    transaction_items
    on
    transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
inner join
    items
    on
    items.id = transaction_items.item_id

Using WITH, I can create a temporary table within my query that I can SELECT from and treat it just like a regular old table.

I will put everything from the previous query in a parentheses and use WITH to give it the name transaction_summaries.

Then I’ll apply the date and customer filtering down below for a more readable query, to separate out all the JOIN logic from the actual WHERE filters that I want to apply on that data.

with transaction_summaries as (
  select
      transactions.date as transaction_date,
      sum(items.price) as total_cost,
      count(*) as number_of_items
  from
      transactions
  inner join
      customers
      on
      customers.id = transactions.customer_id
  inner join
      transaction_items
      on
      transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
  inner join
      items
      on
      items.id = transaction_items.item_id
)

select 
        * 
from 
        transaction_summaries
where 
        first_name = 'beyonce'
        and 
        transaction_date > '2018–01–01'
order by 
        total_cost desc
limit 
        5

If you’re familiar with subqueries, this does a similar thing but makes the SQL far more readable, even if your query isn’t quite as performant as it would have been. This is essentially an implementation of the mantra “Don’t Repeat Yourself” that’s common in the world of programming.

Incredible. And love the SQL styling! 😍

Huge shout out to Ryan and the whole Warby Parker team for making this partnership happen. Special hat tips for behind-the-scenes support from:

Lon Binder, Chief Technology Officer, Warby Parker
Maddie Tierney, Executive Assistant, Warby Parker
Kayla Robbins, Executive Assistant, Warby Parker
Kaki Read, Senior Communications Manager, Warby Parker
Isabel Seely, Senior Brand Manager, Warby Parker

It’s been an absolute pleasure. And of course, the fam at Codecademy. You know who you are. Couldn’t do it without you.

Learning With: ‘“Breaches Everywhere”: Flooding Bursts Midwest Levees, and Tough Questions Follow’

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April 1, 2019

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Learning With: ‘“Breaches Everywhere”: Flooding Bursts Midwest Levees, and Tough Questions Follow’

Before reading the article:

Look at the photos that accompany today’s article. What do they tell you about how levee systems are supposed to work — and what happens when they fail?

Do you have any personal experience with a body of water flooding the nearby land? If so, what happened? Do you know if there was a levee that was breached?

Now, read the article, “‘Breaches Everywhere’: Flooding Bursts Midwest Levees, and Tough Questions Follow,” and answer the following questions:

1. The article describes levees as “an insurance policy against nature’s whims.” What does that mean?

2. How were most levees built and by whom? What entities now manage them? What challenges have levees and the people who control them faced in recent years?

3. How many levees were breached or overtopped in the Midwest this March?

4. What role does the United States Army Corps of Engineers play? How is this group limited in what it can do in regard to regulating water levels? What legal issues have resulted?

5. Who is Tom Waters? What does he believe needs to happen in regard to infrastructure? What analogy does he use to bolster his argument?

Finally, tell us more about what you think:

1. When did the Corps establish a “levees only” system? What did that entail? When was this system said to have “failed spectacularly”?

2. How does the article explain why many people blame the Corps for the recent damaged and breached levees in the Midwest? Do you agree or disagree with this stance? Why?

3. What do you think it’s like to live in places near the levees that have flooded recently? How reasonable do you think it is to hope that policies will change or that flooding won’t happen again? Why do you say that?

Word + Quiz: plangent

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April 1, 2019

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plangent ˈplan-jənt adjective

: loud and resounding

_________

The word plangent has appeared in 20 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Nov. 25 in the theater review “In ‘All Is Calm,’ Thrilling Song in the Trenches” by Alexis Soloski:

A caroling session in a melancholy key, Theater Latté Da’s “All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914” is a World War I documentary musical describing a brief ceasefire.
In 1914, with the war just five months old, enlisted men on both sides emerged from their no-man’s-land trenches on Christmas Day to bury their dead and exchange small gifts. Also, they sang, and if you had been standing in the mud and the cold near Ypres, Belgium, you could have heard those voices joined in “Auld Lang Syne” before the shells began to wail again.
… The plangent tenors, lush baritones and rumbling basses are in excellent voice, and when they come together, the sensation is tremendous and the musical chill effect engulfing. I can’t have been the only person who spent the evening in a pretty much constant state of horripilation. The show is a lesson, if any were needed, in music as a vehicle for emotion. More than the story, it is the music that moves.

_{_________}

How Important Is Knowing a Foreign Language?

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April 1, 2019

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How Important Is Knowing a Foreign Language?

Have you ever studied a foreign language? Do you think it’s still necessary to do so?

Isn’t it easy to find people who speak English in other countries if you really need to communicate with someone? And aren’t there translation apps for your phone you can download anyway?

What is the value of knowing more than one language in the 21st century? Is it really worth the time, effort and investment?

In “Do You Speak My Language? You Should,” Bénédicte de Montlaur writes:

In January, the Modern Language Association made an astonishing announcement in The Chronicle of Higher Education: From 2013 to 2016, colleges across the United States cut 651 foreign language programs. French was the hardest hit, losing 129 programs, followed by Spanish with 118, German with 86 and Italian with 56. Once these programs close, they are very hard to reopen.
According to a Pew study from last year, only 20 percent of K-12 students in America study a foreign language (compared with an average of 92 percent in Europe), and only 10 states and the District of Columbia make foreign-language learning a high school graduation requirement.
The decline in language education could have devastating effects for generations to come. With fewer options for learning a foreign language in school, a sharp decrease in interest is likely to follow. According to the Modern Language Association, enrollment in college-level foreign-language courses dropped 9.2 percent from 2013 to 2016.
The association says these changes are most likely a direct result of the 2008 recession, which hit foreign-language degree programs harder than many other humanities programs. As programs shrink so does the supply of qualified teachers. It’s a vicious cycle.
And yet, knowing a foreign language is becoming ever more essential. The freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is Spanish-English bilingual, recently tweeted, “Bilingualism is a huge advantage in the economy and the world.” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who at age 29 is already one of the best-known members of the Democratic Party, is a case in point.
Her sentiment is shared by many. In response, some educators and parents are rethinking the way language is taught and calling for expanded access to language education.
Nationwide, parents and teachers have been leading grass-roots initiatives to provide foreign-language learning in public schools, and some universities have instituted innovative language programs. From pre-K to graduate studies, there is a move toward holistic language education, based on the notion that learning a language should be grounded in the real, everyday use of that language.

The article concludes:

If Americans want the next generation to be active participants in a multilingual world, dual-language and multicultural education is crucial. Government spending on foreign-language education and the education of qualified foreign-language teachers needs to increase. More states need to enforce language-education requirements. Colleges need to recognize the importance of their foreign-language education programs. In turn, more parents, students and teachers need to lobby for language programs.
The necessity of foreign-language education could not be clearer right now. The future in America, and everywhere, is multilingual. And so is the present.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

— How important is knowing a foreign language?

— What languages can you speak, read or understand? If you know more than one language, how did you learn these additional languages? Was it hard? Fun? How has knowing another language affected and benefited your life?

— If you speak only one language, have you ever wanted or tried to learn a new one? What challenges did you face in acquiring a new language?

— How persuasive is Ms. de Montlaur’s argument that Americans need to study a foreign language? Do you agree with her that the future is multilingual? Should schools require that students learn a second language?

— If you were to study a new language, what would it be and why?

— How much is foreign-language education emphasized at your school? What would you recommend to improve the foreign-language program at your school?

_{Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.}

Learning With: ‘“Dog Suicide Bridge”: Why Do So Many Pets Keep Leaping Into a Scottish Gorge?’

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April 1, 2019

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Learning With: ‘“Dog Suicide Bridge”: Why Do So Many Pets Keep Leaping Into a Scottish Gorge?’

Before reading the article:

Are there any stories of weird, strange or curious occurrences where you live? Are there any odd, mysterious or even cursed places — houses, parks, abandoned lots, bodies of water — near your home?

How would you explain these strange things? Do you think that everything can be explained in a natural way, or that some events are beyond the natural order?

Now, read the article “‘Dog Suicide Bridge’: Why Do So Many Pets Keep Leaping Into a Scottish Gorge?” Then answer the following questions:

1. What happened to Lottie Mackinnon’s dog, Bonnie, that was like an episode of the sci-fi television show “The Twilight Zone,” according to Ceylan Yeginsu, the author of the article? What details support her comparison?

2. How many dogs have jumped off the Overtoun Bridge in Dumbarton, Scotland, according to local legend?

3. What are some rational explanations for the dogs’ behavior?

4. What is a “thin place”? Why are the residents of Dumbarton, in particular, and Scotland in general drawn to the supernatural?

5. Describe the Overtoun Bridge. What details from the article stand out to you?

6. The townspeople have many supernatural explanations for the dogs’ unexplained behavior. Give three examples. Which, if any, do you think is most plausible?

Finally, tell us more about what you think:

— What’s your reaction to the article? What do you think best explains the strange behavior of dogs at the Overtoun Bridge?

— Tell us about your experiences with dogs or animals in general. Have you ever observed strange or mysterious behavior? What do you think might explain their curious actions?

— Do you believe in the supernatural? If so, why? If not, how do you explain events that seem to be outside the natural order of things?

— Write about an event that occurred in your life or the life of someone you know that could be explained as “supernatural” (even if you yourself think it was simply coincidence or a random occurrence). How would you explain what happened? What (or who) do you think might be responsible for these “supernatural” occurrences?

— Why do you think people are interested in the supernatural? Why do you think movies, television shows and books dealing with the supernatural — spirits, ghosts, dark forces — are so popular? Do you think the people in your hometown are particularly superstitious?

Ask a Data Engineer: Warby Parker Edition 👓

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March 31, 2019

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wp-header

Codecademy’s very own Nick Duckwiler (left) and Ryan Tuck from Warby Parker (right) in our office. (📷: Mitch Boyer)

Last month, Codecademy and Warby Parker came together to work on a special Learn SQL from Scratch Capstone Project. It was during this time when I met Ryan Tuck, a Data Engineer at Warby, who played a major part in this partnership. So when he decided to drop by our office for the final QA round, I had to break out my notebook and ask some questions. Enjoy.

Hey Ryan, let’s start off with a question I’ve had for a while — what is a Data Engineer? (Is it similar to a Data Analyst or a Software Engineer?)

At Warby Parker, data engineers are responsible for creating and maintaining the plumbing required to support the data and reporting needs of the business. We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.

What languages/frameworks do you use at Warby?

On data engineering, we use Python as our general purpose programming language, as do most of the other teams in our Technology department. When it comes to databases, we use PostgreSQL for the majority of our SQL needs, and are beginning to use Amazon Athena and Google BigQuery for some of our larger datasets. We use Looker as our exclusive business intelligence entry point to all of this data.

What are some of the projects you worked on?

I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of of smart people in every department at our company to help them solve their varied data needs, from reconciling financial data with the Accounting team to automating and modeling standardized performance metrics for our team of over 200 customer experience advisors.

As part of a team of five supporting the data needs of a rapidly growing company, I’ve tried where possible to focus on helping our analysts solve their own problems. This includes helping people learn Python and commit to our codebase, guiding the creation of data models in SQL, and encouraging people to submit pull requests to add features in Looker, our BI tool.

Seeing dozens of otherwise “non-technical” colleagues opening up PRs on a daily basis, and consequently being part of the democratization of tech that we value at Warby Parker, is probably the most rewarding “project” I’ve been a part of.

One project finished recently during our first annual “Hackweek” is called Pipes, which allows anyone at the company to easily move large amounts of data from wherever to wherever (Looker, Google Sheets, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, etc) on a regular cadence, or manually through a simple one-line chatbot interface. The adoption has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re looking to grow this sort of tooling out even more.

“We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.”

What got you into the data field?

I’ve always been drawn to analytical fields like math, and became pretty proficient in Excel during some internships in college. Once I had learned to program and learned more about data science and its applications in artificial intelligence, I knew that anything I could do to immerse myself in the world of data would be a step in the right direction.

Three and a half years ago, I landed a job as a junior software engineer at Warby Parker not fully knowing what I was in for, but am so glad I got the opportunity to help build tools to support an interesting and ever-changing data-driven culture here.

Where did you learn SQL and Python?

I had a background in C++, and was exposed to Python through an Intro to Data Science course. When Warby Parker hired me onto the Data team in 2015, I had never written a SQL query in my life, but picked it up quickly and within a few months started up internal SQL training classes, which I still teach on a monthly basis.

What does your tattoo say?

The ultimate cheatsheet.

This is Bayes’ Theorem, which is an equation that describes how to update probabilities given new evidence. Two summers ago I worked on building a tool to help predict weekly fantasy football performance. Some colleagues suggested a Bayesian approach would be appropriate, since there aren’t really enough data points in an NFL season to be able to use statistical approaches that require larger datasets, and I’d want to regularly update my predictions after each player’s latest performance.

I did a deep dive into understanding the (simple) math underlying Bayes’ Theorem and came out of that experience with a whole new worldview, understanding my entire knowledge of the world as a big and intricate probabilistic model that I was continuously updating with every experience I ever have. It was pretty transformative, and I figured that was worth a tattoo.

What is a concept in SQL/Python that’s essential to your work?

Donald Knuth said, “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.” I’ve generally found this to be true, and try to live by it in my work. For example, I’ll generally prefer to keep a data model simple by rebuilding it for all time on a daily basis using a single SQL query instead of making a more complicated model that requires iteratively adding to a table, keeping track of state, updated timestamps, when something last ran, etc.

A wise man once said, “Duplicating data makes things go fast,” but databases are already impressively fast to begin with, without implementing anything to improve performance. Ultimately, I almost always approach a problem thinking about optimizing for my time over machine time, for readability over performance, and for introducing as little cognitive overhead as is required by the problem at hand. Only once performance issues or readability issues present themselves will some code be worth a rewrite.

Last question! Since you wrote Warby Parker’s internal SQL training courses, I know there gotta be some inner Curriculum Developer in you. Can you teach a SQL concept in 2 minutes?

Sure! Have you ever written a query that yields some result set and you think, “I’d love to query the stuff I just produced like it was a table?” Enter the WITH clause.

Suppose I have a mega query that gives the transaction summaries:

select
    transactions.date as transaction_date,
    sum(items.price) as total_cost,
    count(*) as number_of_items
from
    transactions
inner join
    customers
    on
    customers.id = transactions.customer_id
inner join
    transaction_items
    on
    transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
inner join
    items
    on
    items.id = transaction_items.item_id

Using WITH, I can create a temporary table within my query that I can SELECT from and treat it just like a regular old table.

I will put everything from the previous query in a parentheses and use WITH to give it the name transaction_summaries.

Then I’ll apply the date and customer filtering down below for a more readable query, to separate out all the JOIN logic from the actual WHERE filters that I want to apply on that data.

with transaction_summaries as (
  select
      transactions.date as transaction_date,
      sum(items.price) as total_cost,
      count(*) as number_of_items
  from
      transactions
  inner join
      customers
      on
      customers.id = transactions.customer_id
  inner join
      transaction_items
      on
      transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
  inner join
      items
      on
      items.id = transaction_items.item_id
)

select 
        * 
from 
        transaction_summaries
where 
        first_name = 'beyonce'
        and 
        transaction_date > '2018–01–01'
order by 
        total_cost desc
limit 
        5

If you’re familiar with subqueries, this does a similar thing but makes the SQL far more readable, even if your query isn’t quite as performant as it would have been. This is essentially an implementation of the mantra “Don’t Repeat Yourself” that’s common in the world of programming.

Incredible. And love the SQL styling! 😍

Huge shout out to Ryan and the whole Warby Parker team for making this partnership happen. Special hat tips for behind-the-scenes support from:

Lon Binder, Chief Technology Officer, Warby Parker
Maddie Tierney, Executive Assistant, Warby Parker
Kayla Robbins, Executive Assistant, Warby Parker
Kaki Read, Senior Communications Manager, Warby Parker
Isabel Seely, Senior Brand Manager, Warby Parker

It’s been an absolute pleasure. And of course, the fam at Codecademy. You know who you are. Couldn’t do it without you.

Free April Wallpaper

By

onlinefreecourse

-

March 31, 2019

0

Our April wallpaper features the Seasonarium Abstract Botanical Set & the La Fontaine Brush Font.

Included in the free download are two options for each device – one with the calendar and one without the calendar.

Enjoy!

Products used in this guide

Check if you can upgrade with Crucial

Our top equipment picks

Best M.2 SSD

Samsung 970 EVO Plus

Value SSD

Western Digital Blue

Compact RAM

Corsair Vengeance 16GB Kit

Additional Equipment

Everything you need

Yougai 38-piece

Hey Ryan, let’s start off with a question I’ve had for a while — what is a Data Engineer? (Is it similar to a Data Analyst or a Software Engineer?)

What languages/frameworks do you use at Warby?

What are some of the projects you worked on?

What got you into the data field?

Where did you learn SQL and Python?

What does your tattoo say?

What is a concept in SQL/Python that’s essential to your work?

Last question! Since you wrote Warby Parker’s internal SQL training courses, I know there gotta be some inner Curriculum Developer in you. Can you teach a SQL concept in 2 minutes?

Incredible. And love the SQL styling! 😍

plangent ˈplan-jənt adjective

Hey Ryan, let’s start off with a question I’ve had for a while — what is a Data Engineer? (Is it similar to a Data Analyst or a Software Engineer?)

What languages/frameworks do you use at Warby?

What are some of the projects you worked on?

What got you into the data field?

Where did you learn SQL and Python?

What does your tattoo say?

What is a concept in SQL/Python that’s essential to your work?

Last question! Since you wrote Warby Parker’s internal SQL training courses, I know there gotta be some inner Curriculum Developer in you. Can you teach a SQL concept in 2 minutes?

Incredible. And love the SQL styling! 😍

FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY.

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