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David Asboth

@davidasboth.com

3.8K followers 1.1K following 1K posts

Data generalist, educator, author of The Well-Grounded Data Analyst (Manning, 2025). Co-host of the Half Stack Data Science podcast.

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · Oct 29

Intro time! I'm David. I call myself a "data generalist" because I haven't found a label that fits.

I've been a software dev, data scientist, and my real passion is education so now I do Python and data training.

I'm currently most interested in skills that data people *actually* need to know.

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 5h

I'm slowly shifting from "do nothing because it will never be perfect" to "do something now even if it's ugly" as the default and doing it out loud definitely helps.

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 7h

Ok the plus side, it's easier than ever to DO SOMETHING! Ideally publicly!

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 21h

I DM for my 6 year old using Hero Kids, which is a lightweight D&D with only d6s and it works a treat for any kind of story I've thought up so far! www.heroforgegames.com/hero-kids/

Hero Kids – Hero Forge Games

www.heroforgegames.com

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 2d

You're not alone, here's some leaked footage from my latest conference talk:

a pixel art of two men standing next to each other talking .

Alt: a pixel art of two men standing next to each other talking. One is very animated and moving his hands all over the place as he talks

media.tenor.com

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 2d

Oh that's a big topic! Definitely a huge issue with the education system (in at least two countries that I'm familiar with).

I read Brave New World in school, and all those Philip K Dick ones you referenced and the Handmaid's Tale all within a few months of each other. Taking a dystopia break atm 🤣

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 2d

"Time to browse LinkedIn"

(not limited to my profession of course)

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 5d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 2d

Lovely stuff! I do think curiosity is killed in many people during childhood. Shame because there is so much to be curious about! Also, I see you wrote about A Scanner Darkly recently, which I loved and I too read most of those dystopias in quick succession 😂

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 3d

The problem with having ideas, writing them down, and not acting on them for ages is that I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking.

I have a blog post idea written down that just says: learning "experiences"

What does that mean?????

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 5d

Overconfident in everything it does, as usual 🤣

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 6d

Worth reading this deeper dive into how well GenAI tools do with dataviz problems, by @nrennie.bsky.social

#databs #datasky

Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 6d

Wondering if you can outsource your data viz work to ChatGPT? 📊

I tested out a few different generative AI tools, giving them prompts to visualise two different data sets. If you're interested in the results, you can read them here: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/gen-ai-...

#RStats #Python #DataViz #GenAI

Generative AI for Data Visualisation – Nicola Rennie

Can generative AI create good data visualisations? This blog post compares the performance of ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini when presented with a generic request to visualise a dataset.

nrennie.rbind.io

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 6d

Very interesting! Whenever I tried it for data analysis, it did the same thing: produced *something* with no follow up questions. I wonder how well a best possible version of this would do e.g. if it had access to best practices and some more guidance. But by then you could just do it yourself!

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 7d

Part of the "stickiness" of terms is how much people like to debate whether they're good terms in the first place. People will use it more if it's controversial (probably)

Reposted by David Asboth

Data Behind the Scenes Conference @databsconf.com · 8d

The videos from the #DataBS Conference have made it to YouTube!

Over the coming days, we'll highlight sessisons from the event -- one post per talk.

You can also sneak ahead by going straight to the YouTube playlist, here:

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Data Behind the Scenes 2025 - YouTube

Data Behind the Scenes is a data conference by data practitioners, for data practitioners. We come together to share stories and experiences about the the me...

www.youtube.com

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 9d

I think Randall Munroe made this just for you!

A chart showing "number of cuts" versus "number of measurements" with phrases like "serial killer", "surveyor", "really bad carpenter", "good carpenter", "good carpenter" and "surgeon" occupying different points. The chart is titled "Measure Twice, Cut Once - Carpentry proverb"

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 10d

A blue stress ball (RIP) and a lovely notebook from the Data Science Festival (late 2021 I think). Somehow that notebook isn't full yet, despite using it for work notes all the time. A good notebook is surprisingly satisfying!

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 11d

I got to round 2 of this challenge so I'm writing my second short story this weekend!

I only joined to force myself to write a bit more and I'm so happy I get to write another!

I'll post all the stories I write for this when the organisers say it's OK (a few weeks before I can post the first one).

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · Jun 21

I like writing and want to do more so I'll be taking a little writing challenge later this year.

Join me in the @nycmidnight.bsky.social 500-word Fiction Challenge on August 15th!

Learn more at nycmidnight.com/500

An image banner that says "The 500-word fiction challenge, August 15, nycmidnight.com"

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 11d

It was way back in 2016, I was still doing my data science Masters. Ironically, I was supposed to be preparing for a group presentation the next day but I thought I'd drive an hour to give a 5 minute talk on procrastination instead 😂

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 11d

I haven't yet had a bad experience giving a talk anywhere. There has always been at least one person coming up to me to chat afterwards and that includes my 5 minute lightning talk I did on procrastination years ago 😂 I think people just appreciate that someone else is putting themselves out there!

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 13d

So many questions. "In the same way vibe coding has transformed software development".

Has it?

Do we want spreadsheets, on which entire companies are run, being amended by something allegedly less than 60% accurate?!?

Have these companies just stopped pretending like they're launching useful AI?

Zoë “Baddie Proctor” Quinn @unburntwitch.com · 13d

Microsoft says its Agent Mode in Excel has an accuracy rate of 57.2 percent in SpreadsheetBench, a benchmark for evaluating an Al model's ability to edit real world spreadsheets. This result

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 14d

I often find by the time I type up the problem in a way that maximises my chance that the LLM response will be right, I could either have written the code myself or, best case scenario, I rubber ducked myself into figuring out what I'm doing wrong.

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 16d

How long before one of them says "some of my best friends are racists"

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 16d

Yeah I get that they're extreme ends of the spectrum, although I suspect there are more 100% mechanists than cyborgists.

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 16d

Cool experiment! I like the fact that some of them like GPT-5 actually kept themselves busy. Out of interest, where are you on the mechanist-cyborgist spectrum?

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 17d

Isn't it just perfect? I show it to all my students especially when I invariably get the sense from them that they want to skip past the "boring data cleaning" and do the "fun machine learning". Boy, does the real world have a surprise for them!

David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 18d

People would have to speak anonymously to protect their identity 😂 like those news programmes where the interviewee is just a shadow or a blur and their voice is put through a Darth Vader filter

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