One Year as a Data Scientist at Stack Overflow - DZone Big Data

One day in January 2013, I found myself wasting time on the internet. This wasn't a good idea: I was as busy as anyone 2.5 years into their PhD. I had to finish a presentation on some yeast genetics research, I was months behind on a paper with an NYU collaborator and even farther behind on some leftover undergraduate research. I was also busy in my personal life--I had returned from a trip to Israel and had just taken up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and jogging. But this one day, I was wasting time by answering a stranger's question about the beta distribution. The question was on Cross Validated, the statistics sister site of developer Q&A site Stack Overflow.