Developer on Fire
Developer on Fire
Episode 281 | Rick Pack - Cool Scholar
Guest:
Rick Pack talks with Dave Rael about using data to inform decisions, learning from mistakes, broad interests, and applying lessons
Rick Pack is a data scientist who enjoys running in master's track meets and volunteering through chess mentorship. He programs primarily in R and SQL although he has dabbled in F# and Excel VBA, and primarily used SAS for 7 years, primarily in the pharmaceutical industry as a statistical programmer. His energetic home includes an energetic wife and dog (goldendoodle). His data science work is currently focused on a value-based healthcare initiative. He also continues to work on an R package called fbadstats to assist with analyzing one's Facebook advertising efforts.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Rick Pack
- - How Rick became a data scientist
- - Rick's interest in health and healthcare
- - Rick on being a programmer rather than a developer
- - The nature of data science
- - The things that "light Rick up"
- - Limitation of the conclusions you can draw from data and the virtue of statistical analysis
- - Rick's interest in being both cool and scholarly
- - Rick's story of failure - overworking and letting go of taking care of himself
- - The lessons from Rick's background in political science applicable to data science and programming
- - Rick's success story - Navigating the competing interests of different stakeholders to deliver something useful with a nice user interface while learning new tools
- - How Rick stays current with what he needs to know
- - Rick's book recommendation
- - The things that have Rick most excited
- - Rick's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Rick
Resources:
- Rick's Blog
- Masters Track Meets
- SAS
- Melinda Thielbar
- Jamie Dixon on Developer On Fire
- Kevin Feasel
- Thomas Henson on Developer On Fire
- Aslak Hellesøy on Developer On Fire
- Terence McGhee on Developer On Fire
- Scott Nimrod on Developer On Fire
- The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists - Neil Strauss
- Neil Strauss on the Tim Ferriss Show
- John Sonmez on Developer On Fire
Rick's book recommendation:
Rick's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Understand requirements
- Have the courage to offer ideas, even if they differ from the given requirements - also know that unrealistic timelines are not final
- Take care of your mental health
