Elixir Wizards is an interview-format podcast, focused on engineers who use the Elixir programming language. Initially launched in early 2019, each season focuses on a specific topic or topics, with each interview focusing on the guest's experience and opinions on the topic. Elixir Wizards is hosted by Eric Oestrich and Sundi Myint of SmartLogic, a dev shop that’s been building custom software since 2005 and running Elixir applications in production since 2015. Learn more about how SmartLogic uses Phoenix and Elixir. (https://smartlogic.io/phoenix-and-elixir?utm_source=podcast)
Machine Learning in Elixir vs. Python, SQL, and Matlab with Katelynn Burns & Alexis Carpenter
In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Katelynn Burns, software engineer at LaunchScout, and Alexis Carpenter, senior data scientist at cars.com, join Host Dan Ivovich to discuss machine learning with Elixir, Python, SQL, and MATLAB. They compare notes on available tools, preprocessing, working with pre-trained models, and training models for specific jobs.
The discussion inspires collaboration and learning across communities while revealing the foundational aspects of ML, such as understanding data and asking the right questions to solve problems effectively.
Topics discussed:
- Using pre-trained models in Bumblebee for Elixir projects
- Training models using Python and SQL
- The importance of data preprocessing before building models
- Popular tools used for machine learning in different languages
- Getting started with ML by picking a personal project topic of interest
- Resources for ML aspirants, such as online courses, tutorials, and books
- The potential for Elixir to train more customized models in the future
- Similarities between ML approaches in different languages
- Collaboration opportunities across programming communities
- Choosing the right ML approach for the problem you're trying to solve
- Productionalizing models like fine-tuned LLM's
- The need for hands-on practice for learning ML skills
- Continued maturation of tools like Bumblebee in Elixir
- Katelynn's upcoming CodeBeam talk on advanced motion tracking
Links mentioned in this episode
https://launchscout.com/
https://www.cars.com/
Genetic Algorithms in Elixir by Sean Moriarity
Machine Learning in Elixir by Sean Moriarity
https://github.com/elixir-nx/bumblebee
https://github.com/huggingface
https://www.docker.com/products/docker-hub/
Programming with MATLAB
https://elixirforum.com/
https://pypi.org/project/pyspark/
Machine Learning Course from Stanford School of Engineering
Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow by Aurélien Géron
Data Science for Business by Foster Provost & Tom Fawcett
https://medium.com/@carscomtech
https://github.com/k-burns
Code Beam America March, 2024
Special Guests: Alexis Carpenter and Katelynn Burns.