2019 is already upon us - in fact, it’s already about 1/20 of the way done. The new year is an easy delineator for making large-scale to-do lists since it’s easy to mark and measure your progress and there’s a clear finish line when the calendar turns over again. Personally, some of these goals are things I’ve been interested in accomplishing for a while now, but have been unable to for whatever reason. Now that I have a job in the real world, I think it will be easier for me to focus on them since that prospect will not be looming over me.
The goals will fill a range of areas, and while most are quantitative and thus easily measured, there are some that are a little more squishy and subjective. As an analyst, I enjoy being able to look back and put a number on my progress and how I did with each goal, but I understand that there are some areas where that simply isn’t possible. I’ll try to group the goals as best I can for ease of consumption by the reader. Without further ado, my goals for 2019:
Data Science/Statistics
- Contribute to an open source package or tool
- Ideas include writing sklearn-style methods in Python for Bayesian Additive Regression Trees and/or DP Means
- Finish in the top 20% of a Kaggle competition
- Bonus goal: finish top 10%
- Complete Bayesian Methods for Hackers
- May do it in the native PyMC, but tempted to try doing it in Pyro
- Run an A/B test on this very site
Basketball
- Automate a pipeline for scraping, cleaning, and saving NBA and NBA G-League play-by-play and box score data
- Create models for the NBA Draft and projecting G-League play to the NBA level
- Explore smaller models/explorations/projects in basketball that can be completed within a two-week timeframe. Potential projects include:
- Salary distributions of teams and how it relates to minutes/production
- Height and performance in regular season vs playoffs
- Homogeneity in offenses over time
- Discuss basketball philosophy and potential changes to the game
Lifestyle/Other
- Eliminate use of single-use plastic (eg plastic forks, plastic bags, etc)
- Reduce consumption of processed foods
- Shopping at markets more often
- Not using deli meats on sandwiches
- Limiting sweets to quality baked goods, chocolate, and occasional ice cream
- Read 10 books, including at least 5 non-fiction
- Recommendations welcome
- Join a gym with basketball courts and free weights
- Play basketball at least once a week
- End of year goals: Squat 225 / Deadlift 255 / Bench 185
- Reach 90% fluency/completion in Italian on Duolingo
It’s certainly a lot, but hopefully the progress builds on itself! I’ll revisit the list occasionally to see how I’m doing on the goals or if goals are modified or added. Looking forward to working on these in the (sorta) new year!
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