Alaka Halder

In Granada, past the houses and hills, I kept expecting to find the sea

#ASHEcon2025 has been awesome! Attended some great presentations, got helpful feedback on my paper, and made new friends

I’ll try to recap some of the talks but I forgot to take photos (I did take notes!)

Looking forward to the Wed session on mental health (and your paper on seasonal allergies)

I'm asking o3 to help interpret a report on a topic new to me. When I pointed out that it was hallucinating more than usual (there's no pg 26!), it said that the PDF periodically "ages out" of the chat

Is this new? A capacity issue?

I’ve now uploaded the file for the 4th time

Who’s going to #ASHEcon2025? I arrive Sun and present on Mon (3:30pm - Environment and Health)

It’s my 1st time at ASHEcon! Let me know if you’d like to meet. I’m interested in healthcare access + costs, environment x health, development econ

Please recommend sessions/events you’re excited about!

This is useful for analysts, researchers, and PMs who find git stressful and don’t want to keep pinging the on-call engineer or data scientist 😄

It's helped me avoid some recent headaches with some recent team version control interactions. Definitely recommend

If you're anxious about git operations (rebasing, reverting, cherry-picking, shelving, stashing) or unsure which ones to use, especially in a team repo, Augment (AI code editor) can walk you through the steps (with clear instructions and reasons) or handle the changes for you

How are we already a week into June?

Anyone at Google Gemini who can help my team with a request to increase our API rate limit?

We'd like to switch to Gemini but need to test at scale first

I submitted a request on Wed morning (ET) and tried following up. No response either time.

Help us give you our money!!

Data Scientist New York City, New York

🚀 Garner Health is growing! I'm hiring early-career data scientists to join my team (NYC-based, 3 days/week in office).

If you're interested — or know someone who might be — check out the job description and application:

job-boards.greenhouse.io/garnerhealth...

My standards are likely too high, but for that, I blame the hype 😝

In defense of AI, I like the humble GPT 4 models. They're pretty useful for (1) quickly and cheaply extracting routine data from large, messy, diverse sources, (2) helping debug code when I'm tired, (3) roughly synthesizing LARGE logs and (4) catching typos

The stark contrast between my disappointing experience with o3 (yes, I use pro) and others’ makes me feel like the joke’s on me — as if o3 is intentionally, defiantly, and obstinately sloppy, like a teenager testing my attentiveness to see what she can get away with. 🙃

I've enjoyed #PAA2025 so much that I still haven’t made it to the National Gallery (DC)

Yesterday, I presented two projects on child health and labor outcomes in developing countries, one in a flash session and one as a paper

Hoping to share a quick recap next week of papers I've enjoyed!

Alternatively, they know very well that I can't afford to buy Renaissance and Baroque art

Do museums run ads? Maybe send me ads for museums I haven't visited?

I dream of a day when all these social media platforms and tech behemoths — which I assume know more about me than I know about myself — will show me a good ad, sponsored post, or recommendation 🙏

I fear the problem is that I care about boring things that don’t sell 🙃

📈🤔 How do you decide when you have enough evidence to make a decision? When to call it a day vs. gather more data?

I’m planning to write about this as I reflect on Q1 projects

Till then, I’d love to hear from you: principles you use, surprising experiences, good resources, etc.

📊🩻 As a follow-up, I wrote about breaking into healthcare data roles after receiving questions from soon-to-be graduates and early-career generalists

www.alakahalder.xyz/2025/03/20/b...

Hope this helps some of you! What advice did I miss?

What approaches have worked well, what hasn't, what do you plan to try next?

How does your team or organization approach quarterly roadmap planning?

How does leadership involve individual contributors, whether by soliciting ideas, voting on ideas, or in other ways?

Per item on the roadmap, how precisely do you define "done"?

You saved time, money, and effort. Your team is now free to focus on something that matters (or chase down the next shiny new thing!)

I’ve never seen this kind of “failed” discovery work celebrated or highlighted as a “win” on a resume.

Have you? If not, maybe it’s time to start!

I’ve seen this especially demoralize early-career teammates who feel their career advancement depends on completing a discovery project that leads to a build

But it’s a success to drop the doomed project early! You completed your goal (research) and reached a clear conclusion

It’s OK to cull seemingly good ideas with low impact. I’m not talking about politics, just research projects at work

I’m lucky to work somewhere that actively encourages this

Yes, it’s disappointing to discover that an algorithm or product isn’t worth building

Many early-career data science enthusiasts ask me how to stand out in startup job applications

I wish I could reply to everyone. Instead, I consolidated some advice on resumes and cold outreach, drawing on my experience as a hiring manager and interviewer:

www.alakahalder.xyz/2025/03/12/r...

When giving tough, fair feedback (before the point of needing to part ways), I’ve found it makes a difference to show that you believe in the person’s ability to succeed

It sounds obvious and yet doesn’t happen as often as I’d expect in practice — why?

If they hadn't told you the dog was drowning, what would you have thought?

(Goya, 1820 - 1823, Museo Del Prado, Madrid)

www.museodelprado.es/en/the-colle...

A Hospital Helped a Beloved Doctor’s Practice Flourish Even as It Suspected He Was Hurting Patients Hailed as a savior upon his arrival in Helena, Dr. Thomas C. Weiner became a favorite of patients and his hospital’s highest earner. As the myth surrounding the high-profile oncologist grew, so did th...

Article: www.propublica.org/article/thom...

Depressing ProPublica article re: prominent Montana oncologist

I'm unfamiliar with the law. Can someone explain why it's unclear if the suspicious deaths are being investigated? Is the evidence insufficient? Are investigators unable to disclose more? Why was his license renewed?

I did, however, spend plenty of time looking for animals. I'm especially fond of finding small cats and dogs in paintings

The Wedding at Cana by Veronese is a great example, though I haven't seen it in person

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Beautiful but too crowded on Presidents' Day to be truly enjoyable. Why do I keep visiting museums on public holidays?

I was too grumpy to look up at the ceilings -- I always look at ceilings! -- and missed The Coronation of Hebe

Next time...