Lara Kattan
Lara is a data scientist (but who isn't these days), curriculum developer and instructor. She's a data science manager at Ernst & Young (EY) and an adjunct at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. When she's not writing Python code, she's probably taking care of foster kittens or falling on the ice (thanks to a recent but so far not-very-successful attempt to learn to figure skate).
Sessions
Add to your machine learning arsenal with an introduction to simulation in Python using SimPy! Simulations are increasingly important in machine learning, with applications that include simulating the spread of COVID-19 to make decisions about public policy, vaccination and shutdowns.
You can use simulation to answer questions like, Can you increase profits by adding more tables or staff to your restaurant? You can also use simulation to create data for modeling when it's hard or impossible to get (e.g. simulate purchases in response to promotions on certain products to see if they increase sales).
To benefit from this talk, you'll need to know a small amount of Python, specifically how to write functions and simple classes. No previous knowledge of simulation needed! If you know about simulation in another language and want to see a SimPy example, you can also benefit from this talk. You'll get a Jupyter notebook with a simple but fully worked out example to follow along with and to study on your own time after the conference.