The best stories of 2021

Jan 07, 2022

Hello,

I spent the holiday binge-watching movies, catching up on my reading, playing board games, spending quality time with family/friends, and planning for 2022. What was most refreshing was to go through the week without any schedule.

As we step into a new year, I’d like to thank you all for your support through the past year 👍 Wish you the best for 2022!

This newsletter will take you about 4 minutes to read.

I. Spotlight: The best stories of 2021

Here’s a round-up of my most popular newsletter editions, articles, videos, and social posts from the past year.

I prioritize the creation of timeless content instead of topical or trending ones. So, each of these pieces is as relevant today as they were a few months ago.

(Photo by Paul Green on Unsplash)

1. Top 3 Newsletters:

Last year saw the first anniversary of my newsletter. Since December, I’m republishing it as a LinkedIn newsletter as well. Here are editions that had the highest open rate.

2. Top 3 Articles:

I write for Forbes, Entrepreneur, and The Enterprisers Project. Here are articles that resonated the most with these audiences.

Forbes: AI Can Now Detect Depression From Your Voice, And It’s Twice As Accurate As Human Practitioners
Entrepreneur: When should you not invest in AI
Enterprisers Project: Data science: 3 scenarios CIOs could see in 2030

3. Top 3 Videos:

Apart from talks, I’ve seen great responses for 5-minute whiteboards and 15-minute thought leader interviews (my experiment from 2021). Here’s the best in each.

Whiteboard: Questions That Help You Grow In Your Data Science Journey
Expert Interview: How to build an AI-powered organization
Talk: 5 Steps to Transform into a Data-Driven Organization

4. Top 3 Social posts:

I made 142 posts on LinkedIn last year - about 3 per week. While my posts have an average of 4000 views each, these were the most popular.

II. Industry Roundup:

1. 10 AI Predictions for 2022

9 minutes | Forbes | Rob Toews

Rob Toews makes 10 AI predictions at the intersection of technology, business applications, politics, and venture capital. He got 6 of his 10 predictions right last year. This is an excellent list that includes the rationale for the projections and the companies that might hit the milestones. Take a look.

-> Read the Article

2. How Scotiabank raced ahead despite a late start in data & analytics

6 minutes | MIT SMR | Tom Davenport, Randy Bean

One often assumes that if a company starts late on its AI journey, it may never catch up with the competition. This article traces the path taken by Scotiabank, one of the big five banks in Canada. It shows the company closely integrated its data and analytics work, took a pragmatic approach to AI, and focused on reusable data sets for ROI.

-> Read the Article

3. The myth of AI: Why computers can never think the way we do

11 minutes | TechTalks | Ben Dickson

Research furthering today’s narrow AI systems will never lead us to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), says Erik Larson, author of The Myth of AI. He shows how an excessive focus on replicating deductive and inductive inference has blindsided us on abductive inference - the human ability to develop intuitions and hypotheses from seemingly infinite possibilities. He warns that this skewed focus could be costly.

-> Read the Article

III. From my Desk:

1. Article: AI Trends In 2022: What’s Real And What’s Hype?

8 minutes | Forbes

To ring in the new year, I asked industry experts five unusual, actionable questions for 2022 - from rarely discussed trends, biggest hype, bad advice they've heard, blessings from the pandemic, to books they've gifted the most🔮

-> Read the Article

2. Whitepaper: How to pick the most impactful data science projects

13 minutes | Gramener

Picking the wrong projects is a key reason for the failure of data science projects. This whitepaper shares a step-by-step methodology to prioritize your projects using three important factors. The approach is illustrated using an industry case study.

-> Read the Whitepaper

Did you know that there are just 14 possible calendar configurations in all? 😮 More new year trivia here.

Thank you for subscribing and reading the newsletter. I appreciate your attention,

Ganes.

PS: Did someone forward this to you? You can subscribe here.

My Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube

I’m Ganes Kesari. I publish ‘Data-Driven Future’ to help understand how data shapes our world, explore key trends, and explain what they mean for you today. I speak and write to demystify data science for decision-makers and organizations.

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