Albert Cheng

Target Identified! How Advanced Fingerprinting is Used to Identify Cyber Attackers

Identifying the bad actors!

In this blog I discuss about how fingerprinting is used to counter against cyber attacks.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 17 March 2023

Unleashing the Power of AI - Learning to Learn with Little Real-World Examples

Overcoming real-world limitations of data availability

I wanted to touch upon this topic, as it is a very real-world challenge experienced by most ML projects and systems.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 13 July 2022

The Machine Learning Minefield - How to Avoid Getting Hit by Machine Learning Poisoning

Data corruption that destroys machine learning systems

In this blog post, I explore the concept of machine learning poisoning and how it is a very dangerous form of attack!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 22 March 2022

The Art of Keeping Secrets - Data Anonymization and Synthetic Data Explained

How to safely handle personally identifiable information

In this blog post, I go over techniques in anonymising data and creating synthetic data to comply with data protection laws

Posted by Albert Cheng on 07 February 2022

How the Pandemic Impacted Human Traffic

Diving into mobility traffic and seeing how COVID-19 impacted human movement

In this blog post, I explore how city traffic changed in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 27 January 2022

X-Ray Vision for Machine Learning - How Model Interpretability demystifies the ML black-box

The 'why' is just as important as the 'what'

In this blog post, I will explore why explainable AI is important, as well as some techniques in making machine learning models more explainable

Posted by Albert Cheng on 09 September 2021

A guide on Airflow best practices

Go with the flow!

In this blog post, I cover some best practices to get the most out of Airflow, a popular open-source data orchestration system!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 21 May 2021

Special Sauce of ML - Heuristics and Feature Engineering

The best way to improve ML isn't always in the algorithm

In this blog post, I explore the power of hybrid machine learning systems, which combine the benefits of rules-based models and ML model, as well as how great feature engineering can make or break a system.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 18 October 2020

From Chaos to Control - Using Automated Testing for Big Data Pipelines

Like seat belts, once you have em', you appreciate them a lot!

I explore automated testing in the context of big data infrastructure. Both on data and on code!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 30 September 2020

DataOps Part 2 - using data to find data

Data-driven techniques apply to finding data as well.

In part 2 of DataOps, I discuss how data-driven techniques can help you find and identify your data.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 01 August 2020

DataOps - using data to manage data

The way to manage big data is using data

In this blog I explore the concept of DataOps and how you can use data to manage big data infrastructure.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 25 July 2020

Data science/analytics pitfalls Part 2 - a focus on machine learning

This time focusing on machine learning!

In part 2 of my series on common data science/analytics pitfall, we explore some more ML-specific pitfalls.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 15 June 2020

Exploring some common data science/analytics pitfalls

It's a trap!

In data science/analytics, sometimes there are pitfalls that will lead you to the wrong conclusion (or even worse, misleading conclusions)! This blog post will explore some of the more common pitfalls/traps.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 10 June 2020

From Zero to Kimball - A Guide and Tips on Good Data Warehousing Practices

Exploring Kimball dimension modelling best practices

In this article, I discuss how Kimball dimension modelling best practices can really improve your data warehouse design. A well-designed warehouse is a work of art!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 27 May 2020

Unlocking the Mystery of Google Analytics and Advertising

Why do I keep seeing ads about shoes!?

I deep-dive into Google Analytics and Advertising works to dissect how the tracking works!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 24 May 2020

Property vs Shares - Which One is the Better Investment?

Let's see which one wins!

Which is a better investment in the long-run - property or shares? I attempt to answer this using a data-driven approach.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 11 May 2020

Lock It Up - Keeping Your Data Safe with Security Best Practices

The prevention is definitely better than the cure!

As the old saying goes, 'a stitch in time says nine'. A little bit of extra work to have good security practices can go a long way.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 09 May 2020

Sailing Through Data Privacy Waters - A Recap on How Data Protection Laws Work

A practical guide to privacy law in the context of data work

This blog post will explore how data protections laws, like the GDPR, affect day to day data professionals and how to avoid getting on the wrong side of the law.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 07 May 2020

Event, Action! A Beginner's Guide to Event-Driven Architecture

Fully embracing the scalability and flexilibility of cloud serverless infrastructure

This article will discuss how to leverage serverless cloud computing even further with event-driven architecture. No more schedules!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 04 May 2020

Time Series Forecasting - Different to Regular Machine Learning

An example of using data science to predict electricity usage

I explore how to use data science to forecast electricity usage. Spoilers - you can't just use regular ML algorithms!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 19 April 2020

Navigating the date islands and finding the gaps - Part 2

Mind the Gap!

Identifying the gaps and how long a continuous date range is an important exercise a few industries/domains. For example, in the insurance industry, identifying whether a person has a policy covered continuously.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 11 March 2020

Need a Date Dimension Table? Why not BYO!

A dimension date that fits into your very own Jupyter Notebook!

A date dimension is life saver for analytics work! I explore how to make your own in a few simple lines of code.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 11 February 2020

Date Islands - A Kimball Approach

Navigating the islands without sinking

Data warehouse design is an important thing - I explore how to navigate 'date islands' using a Kimball perspective to avoid getting lost!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 08 February 2020

The Secret Sauce of Scalability - Building data pipelines without servers!

A Guide to Serverless Data Pipelines without the big bill!

I explore how to get data into the cloud without the big bill using the magical world of 'serverless' computing. Pay only for what you use!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 06 February 2020

The Prophets have Spoken! A Quick Exploration of Weather Forecasting

An experiment using Facebook's Prophet library

To make life easier and come up with quick forecasts, Facebook's Core Data Science team developed Prophet. It's forecasting out of the box for time-series data- and its free!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 27 October 2019

How it all started - From TV to Data Visualisation

A data visualisation journey from humble beginnings

Tracking personal spending is a tight task! To help with this, I began to track my spending on entertainment products, such as movies, video games and creating some fancy visualisations!

Posted by Albert Cheng on 26 October 2019

A Peek Under the Hood - this Website's Architecture and Analytics

Explaining how this website infrastructure works

As the beginning blog of this website, I discuss how this website works and the technology under the hood. I explore how I combined serverless and cloud technology to achieve this.

Posted by Albert Cheng on 01 October 2019