Jeff Ma – Making Decisions with Data - [Invest Like the Best, EP.151] - a podcast by Patrick OShaughnessy

My guest this week is Jeff Ma. Jeff was on the famous MIT Blackjack team from the book Bringing Down the House but has spent his career in an around fields of analytics and data science. He’s studied sports betting and analytics, built companies for analyzing human capital, and ran the data science and analytics group at Twitter. Here are links to his book, blog, and podcast. Our discussion is about a number of fascinating ways data is being used to make decisions in the worlds of sports and business. Please enjoy!
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag 
Show Notes1:20 - (First Question) – How quantitative analytics have evolved in sports and how they’re being used
4:26 – Best role of humans in the analysis process8:38 – Sports that are most interesting to observe through analytics
10:26 – How does luck play into sports analysis11:54 – Team analytics vs better analytics
12:38 – Concentration of success among sports betters and their moats14:58 – Favorite lessons learned from professional gamblers
16:45 – How analytics got introduced into gambling19:21 – Understanding one’s own biases
24:04 – How he became VP of analytics at Twitter28:37 – Primary lessons from the work evaluating human capital and talent with analytics
            28:59 – Niel Roberson Podcast Episode31:40 – How to model people for success when hiring
33:29 – How to hire the right data scientists’ team37:54 – Most interesting problems they tackled at twitter
42:31 – Responsibility of social platforms to police itself45:34 – Areas that would interest him in the future as an investor
49:24 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Jeff51:50 – Values instilled in him by his parents.
 Learn More
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub
Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

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