Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Sebastian Gutierrez: How did you come to be an analytics engineer at
Rent the Runway?
Anna Smith: The short story is that I started a PhD in physics, did an intern-
ship at Bitly, and liked it so much that I quit grad school, or, in friendlier terms,
I'm in absentia indefinitely. The three things that really excited me about this
transition were how I was learning so much so quickly, interacting with real
data, and trying to understand how people use the Internet. After Bitly I moved
to Rent the Runway, where I focus on helping people find the right dress.
I think the Rent the Runway product is really great and I find the people
around me really inspiring. I couldn't be happier with where I am.
Gutierrez: What type of physics were you studying?
Smith: I went into grad school wanting to do quantum computers as I really
liked the theory behind it. I had prior experience in the area from a past
internship, so I wanted to continue to work in it. Unfortunately, at my grad
school there wasn't enough quantum computer theory, so I ended up doing
lots of experiments. This really wasn't my taste, so when there were experi-
ments I elected to do all of the computer work. After all, I didn't want to burn
my eyes out with lasers or similar accidents. I did enjoy some parts of the
experience, like building an interferometer.
Then an opportunity came up with some professors to do more informatics
and data science-type work. They wanted to meld the disciplines of math,
computer science, and physics together. Their idea was that each discipline has
their own great things going on, and by combining them, they could create the
future of applied math. This is more or less what has happened with computer
science in the industry. So as part of their goal, the professors were developing
these great algorithms and ways of dealing with data. I started by working with
some companies and other professors to do a couple of projects that were
separate but related to the overall big idea.
Gutierrez: So you went from theory and experiments to data. What types
of work did you end up doing?
Smith: In physics, we've had large amounts of data for a long time. A portion
of physics is dedicated to trying to learn how to use collected data, how to
automate data-related tasks, and how to get information from the data. A great
example of this data is optical images. One of the longer-term projects focused
on analyzing optical images of galaxies to calculate their surface brightness.
We were looking at how bright a galaxy is from its center and how you can
build a profile of the galaxy based on the optical data. Different types of galax-
ies have different profiles, and so we were trying to learn from the data what
those profiles were and use that as a classification tool. Somewhat surprisingly,
this was not what most astrophysicists at the time were doing. In the past they
have used and still use general curves. First, it was one-parameter curves. Then
fifty years later it was “let's put two parameters in it!” and then so on and so
 
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