Marton Trencseni - Sun 20 October 2024 • Tagged with ab-testing
The article illustrates how Monte Carlo simulations serve as a powerful method for exploring statistical concepts in A/B testing, enhancing understanding, improving experimental design and analysis.
Marton Trencseni - Sun 06 October 2024 • Tagged with taboo, python, async
I built a simple Python-based Taboo game server using asyncio to provide a customizable multiplayer experience via Telnet. 
Marton Trencseni - Fri 04 October 2024 • Tagged with meta
My review of the AI landscape in late 2024, and what the road ahead looks like for those of us not building foundational models. 
Marton Trencseni - Sun 29 September 2024 • Tagged with ab-testing, techtalk, kohavi
Recently, I delivered a techtalk on A/B testing to an audience of non-technical Product Managers and experienced Data Scientists. 
Marton Trencseni - Sat 28 September 2024 • Tagged with meta
A review and introspect on the second 100 articles written on Bytepawn. 
Marton Trencseni - Fri 27 September 2024 • Tagged with openai, chatgpt, sam, altman
A few days ago OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published an article titled The Intelligence Age. I used OpenAI's new o1-mini model to critique Sam Altman's writing of its own future.
Marton Trencseni - Sun 22 September 2024 • Tagged with people, management
I detail my structured approach to managing one-on-one meetings within a 40-person data team, emphasizing people management principles like radical transparency, tailored meeting cadences, and strategies to navigate common managerial challenges to foster a supportive and productive work environment.
Marton Trencseni - Sun 01 September 2024 • Tagged with physics, quantum, mechanics, qubit, entanglement, epr, bell
The article explains the Bell inequality using Monte Carlo simulations in Python, and shows how non-local action-at-a-distance can be used to break it with entangled qubits.
Marton Trencseni - Sun 18 August 2024 • Tagged with physics, quantum, mechanics, qubit, entanglement, epr, bell
This blog post explores foundational quantum mechanics concepts such as superposition, entanglement, and the challenges posed by locality and determinism, while highlighting the historical efforts of Einstein and Bohm to reconcile these phenomena with hidden variable theories.
Marton Trencseni - Wed 07 August 2024 • Tagged with hungary, politics, orban, dubai
In February 2016, I made a life-changing decision to leave Hungary and seek opportunities abroad, starting in London and later moving to Dubai. This essay explores the multitude of reasons behind my choice and why I have no immediate plans to return to Hungary.
Marton Trencseni - Thu 01 August 2024 • Tagged with polya, problem, solving
I discuss Polya's How to Solve it approach to mathematical problem solving and the 2010 paper Teaching general problem-solving skills is not a substitute for teaching math.
Marton Trencseni - Mon 01 July 2024 • Tagged with cv, screen, hiring
Screening CVs is a critical step in the hiring process, used to determine which candidates progress further in the hiring funnel. While the approach to CV screening can vary by company and industry, the primary goal remains the same: to identify candidates with the potential to succeed in subsequent interview stages.
Marton Trencseni - Mon 17 June 2024 • Tagged with javascript, async, message, queue
In this final post on the toy Javascript async message queue server implementation, I make it compatible with the Python version. I use the library of unit tests developed previously to ensure identical behaviour between the two codebases.
Marton Trencseni - Sat 15 June 2024 • Tagged with python, async, message, queue, unit, test
I write a small library of unit tests for the message queue servers.
Marton Trencseni - Sun 02 June 2024 • Tagged with randomness, extractors, biased, coin, fair
I apply NIST's suite of statistical tests to my randomness extractor implementations from the previous posts.
Marton Trencseni - Sun 26 May 2024 • Tagged with randomness, extractors, biased, coin, fair
I discuss various models of biased bit sequences, and how to extract uniform random (or close to it) output bit sequences from them, illustrated with Python code.
Marton Trencseni - Wed 22 May 2024 • Tagged with python, async, message, queue
In this final post on the toy Python async message queue server implementation, I make further feature and code improvements.
Marton Trencseni - Sat 11 May 2024 • Tagged with javascript, async, message, queue
I write a somewhat more complicated, but still relatively simple async message queue server in Javascript.
Marton Trencseni - Sun 05 May 2024 • Tagged with javascript, async, message, queue
I write a simple, bi-directional async message queue server in Javascript.
Marton Trencseni - Wed 01 May 2024 • Tagged with ab-testing, facebook, stratification, propensity
Why are Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs, known as A/B testing in much of the industry) testing is widely regarded as the golden standard of causal inference? What else can a Data Scientist do if A/B testing is not possible, and why are those alternatives inferior to A/B testing?
This papers shows, using 15 experiments (for ads on Facebook) where a RCT was conducted, that common observational methods (run on the Facebook data, by ignoring the control group) severely mis-estimate the true treatment life (as measured by the RCT), often by a factor of 3x or more. This is true, even though Facebook has (i) very large sample sizes, and, (ii) very high quality data (per-user feature vector) about its users which are used in the observational methods. This should be a major red flag for Data Scientists working on common marketing measurements (such as marketing campaigns) using observational methods.