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• Can you do data science without statistics knowledge?
  15 April 2021

Can you do data science without statistics knowledge? With automation in machine learning the field opens up and one may ask whether we need stats skills in the future more...

• I published the first cartoons of The Data Department series
  07 November 2020

I was working on the illustrations for my book when things got out of control :) I found myself drawing into the nights and I just could not stop. It’s kind of relaxing, kind of fun and I’m sure there are people like me who enjoys stats jokes. So here it is. more...

• Why do overdue tasks take still a long time to finish?
  01 April 2020

The prototypical situation that has been puzzling me for a while is the following:
_- We estimated 3 days for a task
• Bob has been working on the task for 3 days already
• On the daily scrum, he says that he just needs to take care of a couple more things and the task will be finished
• The task is not finished the next day_
more...

• Three challenges of the AI product lifecycle
  01 February 2020

Working on AI products — Whether it is retail, IoT, or marketing — data scientists face similar challenges. Some of these challenges are general to many technology areas, others are specific to AI, due to its unique way this field blurs the boundaries between state-of-the-art research and application development. Let’s look at three prototypical examples of these challenges in the areas of business specification, iterative development of analytics, and testing. more...

• Lean + Data Science
  01 August 2019

I joined this field because of the excitement that we feel upon discovering new patterns in data. With time though, it became clear that identifying patterns is just the first half of this journey. There is another part, which is about sharing this discovery. ‘Sharing’ can be in the form of a presentation, in the form of a change in an existing product or even an entirely new product. Thus the two parts together — nurturing ideas from inception to a product — is the full stack of data science. more...

• Test-driven development and data science
  01 March 2019

The previous two posts of this series were about the business and people perspectives of effective data science teams. However, in themselves they are only necessary but sufficient conditions: without the right tools and processes, the recipe does not work. more...

• From talents to assets
  01 February 2019

After the first part of this mini-series, I received some very interesting insights from fellow data professionals. Interestingly, one of the recurring topics was talent management. This topic is also very close to me. I know from first-hand experience that without good mentors and talent management I would never have been able to get to this point and still enjoy so much my everyday work. In this article, I would like to discuss the two specific aspects of talent management. The first is nurturing talent during internships and the second is whether a computer science dropout or a fresh PhD is better material for a data scientist. more...

• Business vision in effective data science teams
  01 January 2019

This is the first part of a mini-series that summarizes my impressions on what makes certain data science teams effective. Over the years, I have worked in several teams: teams of various sizes, from as small as a duo to as large as a dozen data experts; and of various players, from college dropout savants through rebranded software engineers to PhD/postdocs with long years of academic experience. My role was also changing, I started as a junior and with time and experience developed to be a team lead. more...

• Our chapter is out in a Springer book
  04 September 2018

So this is a big day: our chapter on Cognitive Data Visualization has been published in the series Topics in Intelligent Engineering and Informatics. Aaand… this is the first time that my work can be found in books.google.com :) more...

• The price of data and GDPR
  28 April 2018

25 May 2018. The enforcement day of the famous or infamous GDPR, alias the EU General Data Protection Regulation. From that day, the current situation of data ownership and control changes… or does it. more...

• Quantifying trust
  15 April 2018

I posted today some thoughts about how we can quantify trust on LinkedIn. Here is some exclusive blog content in the same topic. more...

• Minimal example for the development of a data science product
  11 January 2018

Developing a data science product is the focus of many startups and enterprises in our time. Thousands of entrepreneurs are working on finding a way to create a better world or to make huge money. They all want to do this by using current developments in machine learning, data storage, cloud computing, and deep learning. Although many products are built on technology, data-driven products are unique since here the research results of last week may end up in a product already next month. And that is fast. The field is, therefore, filled with noise and buzz… more...

• The invisible countries of the Big Data world
  20 December 2017

For almost ten years, every year on Christmas Eve, my mum took us in the car and drove to an old house in our village. We brought carefully wrapped toys and food to a family in need. She told us that the parents are very nice people and have children who are our age. Since this was a small village, I once asked my mum, “Do I know the children?” My mum looked at me and said, “I don’t think so, you know people in need only if you look for them.” more...

• My favourite mini tools that make my days easier
  28 November 2017

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while now: I’ve collected a handful of great mini tools which I use day by day to make my life easier. These are various small one-functional web or offline tools, some of which you may find useful as well. more...

• There are some really interesting things in November
  05 November 2017

I’ve had a very interesting start for the autumn: not only gave a nice keynote at IEEE CogInfoCom about the Neuroscience of Virtual Reality, but also the track that we organized with my father Zsolt Török received the Best Session Award. It is really good to feel that our work invested pays off. And there are some interesting things coming in November. more...

• Using deep learning to create personalized ads
  14 July 2017

I’ve finally managed to find some time to write a short post about our winning solution at the Telekom Leading Data Hackathon. The aim of this post is to give an example of how to use deep learning in a practical business use case. more...

• Virtual teleportation changes how we think of space
  11 May 2017

The prestigious journal Psychophysiology has just published our new paper on the neural background of navigation. For the impatient (like myself) I’m summarising the interesting parts of the results and methods here. more...

• Our human grid cell study is in PNAS
  14 April 2017

About five years ago, we have come up with a idea about grid cells that challenged mainstream scientific thinking. While grid cells in rodent form a context independent coordinate system for spatial navigation, we thought that their activity actually does depend on the context in humans. To verify this we designed an experiment where epliepsy patients with implanted electrodes had to navigate in virtual environments of different sizes. more...

• Bayesianism vs Frequentism
  26 March 2017

In recent times the popularity of Bayesian statistics has greatly increased, thanks to the large computing power of modern computers. As a result, there is an ongoing debate on whether the Bayesian or frequentist approach is more suitable for statistical and scientific purposes. A great number of introductory papers on these two schools of statistical inference are available online, therefore I will not spend time reiterating the basic definitions here (for those who are interested I recommend these two documents, which contain excellent introductions to the topic). Instead, my goal is to take a look at which of these two approaches is worth following in order to reach the right statistical conclusions – whatever the definition of ‘right’ may be. more...

• Pilot experiment for Twisted Gravity
  19 March 2017

I’ve just returned from pilot testing in the VeME lab directed by Elisa Ferré at Royal Holloway, University of London thanks to my EPS grant. We are studying how vestibular and visual informations interact in the perception of gravity. We focus the current experiment on the dynamic nature of gravity, namely the perception of moving objects. more...

• Our paper in PLoSONE
  14 January 2017

Good start for 2017: our paper is in PLoSONE! more...

• 2016 Infographics
  30 December 2016

So here we are: another great year is ending tomorrow. During the Christmas period I looked back to what happened in 2016, despite the phenomenal John Oliver wrap up, I’m pretty happy with my achievements this year. First I wanted to write a long post about what I am proud of and thankful for, then I realized that in this case a picture indeed tells more than 10^2 words. So here is my 2016 infographic. more...

• Dissertation in VR
  22 November 2016

While I was preparing for the PhD defense, I figured these experiments would be more easy to understand if one can even be there. Luckily, this can now be easily solved with the Google Cardboard SDK and Unity 3D. So here is my Doctoral dissertation in VR :) more...

• Talk at the Budapest BI Forum
  17 November 2016

I gave a talk at the Budapest BI Forum 2016. This was one the best events I’ve been to this year, respect to the organizers. The talk was about how to communicate data science results to the management. This has been an ongoing challenge for me, so I was happy to share some tips based on my experiences. You can have a look at the slides yourself here. more...

• Talk on the future of Human-Computer interaction
  16 October 2016

I’m giving a talk at the CogInfoCom 2016. My slides on what I see as the future of HCI can be seen here made in Slides of loci. The paper which the presentation is based on can be read here on your request. more...

• Hackathon
  11 October 2016

So we have won the Qusp Prize at the largest Brain Hackathon :) more...

• NLP talk in Slides of loci
  06 October 2016

I gave a talk to a brilliant audience yesterday at the NLP meetup. My slides on what we do at Synetiq are available here made in Slides of loci. If you are wondering what that is: it a 3D capable presentation tool I made to design functional and effective 3D enabled presentations. You can read more about the philosophy here. more...

• One busy week
  30 September 2016

Next week is going to be a little bit busy in research, we can meet at several events: more...

• SatRday talk online
  20 September 2016

My talk on using hidden Markov modelling to uncover emotions is available online. more...

• Augmented reality poster 2.0
  25 August 2016

I’m traveling to Barcelona to visit the ECVP2016, where I continue my mission on AR evangelism. I learnt a couple things from the ICOM6 that made this poster a better shot. more...

• Meet me at the satRday conference
  04 August 2016

I’m lucky to give a talk at the satRday conference on September 3 2016. I will tell about time series analysis based on our recent work at Synetiq lab. The most interesting part of this will be about how Hidden Markov Modeling can help identifying emotions based on data from EEG, heart-rate, and GSR recordings. more...

• Senior Data Science competition on Drivendata
  04 August 2016

Our team, YetAnotherDirtyCelticGod, finished at 28th place in a very strong field of data enthousiasts at the Senior Data Science challenge on drivendata.org. more...

• Augmented reality poster at ICOM6
  18 July 2016

This week, I’m at the ICOM6 conference, this is probably the largest conference I have so far been to. I have just submitted my PhD thesis on virtual reality and spatial cognition and brought here a slice of that. more...

• Kobe Bryant competition on Kaggle
  01 May 2016

I was playing basketball in high school, and those were the times when everybody started to be crazy about Kobe here. So I did feel that an era has ended on 13 April. Celebrating his career, Kaggle started a competition where you have to predict missing shot info in his stats. more...

• Talk at Pszinapszis2016
  16 April 2016

I gave a talk about how illusions could save your life at Pszinapszis. I was surprised to see the room being so crowded for such a cognitive topic, there were even people sitting on the floor. It was a great experience to talk about my research in front of such a good audience. Thanks to the organizers for inviting me. more...

• Endre Szemeredi in our lab
  24 March 2016

Yesterday, Prof. Endre Szemerédi came to visit us in the Synetiq lab. We had one serious discussion on graph similarity and clustering. It started as a half hour meeting and ended up 11.30pm and we were still there :) more...

• Talk at the Budapest Data Projects series
  20 February 2016

We are very lucky to give a talk at the next event of the Budapest Data Projects meetup series. more...

• Meeting science and history
  10 December 2015

I was honored to be invited by the Ambassador of Sweeden, H.E. Niclas Trouvé to the annual buffet dinner celebrating the Nobel Prize Award. I met many great researchers during the eve, including László Lovász, Endre Szemerédi, István Hargittai and Anders Bárány (the grandson of Robert von Bárány) just to name a few. more...