PyData Manchester

The Meaning of Lift - What are the Stakeholders Actually Asking? - Josh Hayes (He/Him)
Data science is about more than just answering questions, it’s about understanding them. Often multiple stakeholders will ask the same, reasonable-sounding question, only for it to become clear that they actually all want something subtly different. The role of a data scientist in this case is to listen to the questions, understand what is actually being asked, and help the stakeholders to develop language to better communicate what they want to measure.
In this talk, Josh will talk through an example of this in marketing, discussing advertising spend, attribution modelling, and how we can measure and talk about the impact of campaigns.

Josh Hayes is a Senior Data Scientist at Autotrader, with nearly 10 years of experience across academia and industry. He holds a PhD in astrophysics, and has led teams of data scientists, analysts, and engineers at Natwest and Autotrader. Among various projects, he has led work calculating carbon emissions associated with financial lending, modelled evolution of the UK’s housing stock, and worked to improve real-time monitoring of key business metrics.

In addition to his professional work, Josh has a long history in public speaking to both technical and general audiences. He has featured at the Bluedot festival, worked as a contributor to BBC radio, and was a long-time presenter of the Jodcast astronomy podcast, alongside speaking at multiple academia and industry conferences.

Vector Databases Explained: Do You Really Need One? - Mohmoud Elbadwi (he/him)
This talk explains what vector search actually is, from the ground up. It explores why simple approaches work, until they don't, and shows how vector databases solve the scale problem under the hood. It also discusses the speed versus accuracy trade-off, why it matters for your project, and finishes with a practical framework to help you decide whether you actually need a vector database or if something simpler is already enough.

Mohmoud Elbadwi is a Senior Software Engineer at BES Group, with over 10 years of experience across software engineering, data science, and AI. He has built machine learning models for time series analysis, anomaly detection, and computer vision, and has worked with large-scale data systems across industries including engineering, fintech, and telecoms.

LOCATION
We'll be at Krakenflex, who are also kindly supplying catering. The capacity is limited to 90.

After the talks we'll all head somewhere local for some post-event socialising.

EVENT GUIDELINES
PyDataMCR is a strictly professional event, as such professional behaviour is expected.

PyDataMCR is a chapter of PyData, an educational program of NumFOCUS and thus abides by the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct

https://pydata.org/code-of-conduct.html

Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with its contents.

ACCESSIBILITY
Under 16s welcome with a responsible guardian. There is a quiet room available if needed. Toilets are accessible.

SPONSORS
Thank you to NUMFocus for sponsoring Meetup and further support.
Thank you to Autotrader, Krakenflex and Horsefly Analytics for their ongoing support and sponsorship of PyDataMCR.