analytics 6

Everyone needs a tracking URL shortener. Why tracking? I want to know if they opened my email and clicked the link. Why shortener? I want them to know what the link is about. For example, https://r.s-anand.net/edge-remote-debugging.html is so much more meaningful than https://chatgpt.com/share/68528565-0d34-800c-b9ec-6dccca01c24c I’ve used redirection services in the past - like t.co, bit.ly, goo.gl, ow.ly, and others. They tend to vanish, start charging, serve ads, etc. Here’s my solution: use static HTML for redirection. ...

TDS Project 1 wasn’t just a student project. It was a research and social experiment, too. We tested two skills - analytics and design. The design tests were diverse – and students fared worse there. Design may matter more in the AI era, and I’m glad some designs are brilliant. (But not diverse/creative enough.) I also learnt that Gemini beats Midjourney, which beats ChatGPT for image generation. I asked them to contribute to open source. Most PRs were trivial. But five students made a real difference. For example, this PR to Marimo is excellent! ...

Slides for my DataHack Summit talk (controversially) titled RIP Data Scientists are at https://sanand0.github.io/talks/2025-08-21-rip-data-scientists/ Summary: as data scientists we explore, clean, model, explain, deploy, and anonymize datasets. I live-vibe-coded each step with DGCA data in 35 minutes using ChatGPT. Of course, it’s the tasks that are dying, not the role. Data scientists will leverage AI, differentiate on other skills, and move on. But the highlight was an audience comment: “I’m no data scientist. I’m a domain person. I’ll tell you all this: If you don’t follow these practices, you won’t have a job with me!” ...

Ev of Blogger argues that pageviews are obsolete. Number of unique visitors and time spent on a site are better measures.

I win the bet. ~sanand strikes 14340 to 2931 versus ~mkalidas. Must admit that some people disagree with the majority, though.

I had a bet with Kalidas about which of our pages would get more web hits in October. Of course, October isn’t over yet, but with 12,740 on mine against 2,234, I think I have a decent chance of a pizza.