What do these two have in common ? Data mining is a serious job, while sex is… well … fun.
(First there was the quote ” data mining is like sex for 10-year olds : they all talk about it, but no one does is”. But that time is past : not that 10-year olds have sex, no : everyone does data mining !)
To start : data mining is FUN ! Any professional data miner who thinks otherwise should find another job (selling fish or so…).
All data miners know that data mining is 95% transpiration and 5% inspiration : this means : work.
You have to do all the data extraction, cleansing, etc. etc. :
In sex : preparing the battleground : making an appointment, have a dinner together, go shopping to buy her (him) a present …
Then comes the more enjoyable part : doing the modeling : sampling, feature selection, trying different
models, evaluation of the models. If you neglect this part, the model will be worth nothing.
In sex : foreplay is extremely important, if you neglect it …
At last comes the climax : you evaluate you final ensemble model against a fresh file of unseen data and get all you did it for : a good, reliable, robust, useful model. You look at the results for a while and see that it is good.
In sex : well, you get all you did it for …, and together you look at eachother and see that life is good.
Then you tell it to your boss, write a report, give a presentation and you are proud to see all those looks full of admiration.
In sex : you talk to your friends and tell them what a wonderful night you had and you enjoy how they envy you.
And then up to the next model (both in data mining or sex)
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