Data Skeptic Writer's Guide

This document is a style guide for writers contributing to Data Skeptic. Please review before contributing your first article for us. After each article you complete, it's worth reviewing this guide to ensure your draft aligns well with the details shared below. If you have any questions or feedback, please reach out to Kyle and share.

Publishing

We use github for publishing. Your final draft should be submitted as a markdown file in a pull request.

Tone and Content

As a podcast, Data Skeptic is known for cutting away the fluff and focusing dicussions on the aspects of research and data science that are impactful in practice. Our episodes are relatively short compared to other shows, but packed with content from original, insightful sources. Our content focuses on key insights for people interested in methodology, engineering, and analysis.

We want to capture the same virtues in our blog posts by writing concise, original, interesting content that leaves the reader satisfied that they invested their time reading our posts. Every article should have at least one useful takeaway or recommendation.

Post Types

Our blog focuses on writing articles that fit one of a few templates. For example, of "Career Profile" is an article telling the story of one professional's career. Each article will be unique in it's own way, yet hit common key points and questions following the template outline below.

Career Profile

Regardless of where someone is on their professional journey, the path ahead of them is rarely clear. The stories of experienced professionals contain insights and wisdom for readers seek to achieve similar professional goals. Our career profiles contain the narrative of one individual's professional life from it's starting point to where they are today.

The Career Profile is not an opportunity to segway into an unrelated story about the subject's recent vacation, adorable puppy, or unrelated hobby. If personal elements have an important overlap with their story (e.g. a hobby that became part of their career, an insight found on a trip) it may be a good inclusion. Otherwise leave personal trivia out and focus on their professional accomplishments.

Career Profiles are written by our blog contributors in collaboration with the individual the post will feature. We call this person the "subject" of the profile. You should make personal contact with your subject and introduce yourself. Then, find a time to chat either via phone or virtual meeting to get aquainted and correspond via email as the article develops.

Below is a list of recommended questions that you should consider asking your interviewee.

What is your educational background?
What was your original planned career path? Does it differ from your actual career path?
What's the first major break that gets your career going?
What are some of the most helpful tools or technologies that you use?
What was the biggest struggle in your career?
With the benefit of hindsight, what do you wish you had learned or done sooner?
How has your profession changed since you started working?

Company Profile

A Company Profile should come in 3 parts:

1) The company's products or services

2) Their history or founding story

3) Their current mission

First introduce readers to a company by explaining what value the company provides its customers. Describe the products or services that they offer. How do their customers get a benefit? Next, explore the history (for established companies) or find novel aspects of the founding of the company that contribute to the overall narrative you want to tell. Lastly, establish what the company is working on currently and what they plan to achieve in the near future.

Below is a list of recommended questions that you should consider asking your interviewee.

What product or services are offered?
How large is the team?
What types of professionals are part of the organization?
How is the organization structured (e.g. two offices, fully remote)?
What's the current mission of the organization?
In business, a "moat" is a competitive advantage you have. Does your organization have a moat? Are you creating on?
What are some of the technologies used?
How does the organization use data?
What does the team look for when hiring?
What roles are you looking to fill?
Where does the company hope to be in 3-5 years?

Proof of Concept

Many readers are hands on technical users that are interested in finding elegant, ergonomic technology that can be useful in their work, research, or projects.

Our proof of concept posts should accomplish the following goals:

Introduce a user to a new tool, library, technology, etc. assuming limited prior knowledge
Include links to prerequisite reading if needed
Very early in your article, explain concisely what purpose the solution serves
Provide working source code snippets or link to your code in github (preferably both)
Step the user through any tricky steps or "gotchas".
In 5-12 steps, take the user from an empty canvas to a working prototype
Comment on any limitations for the solution. For example, how will it scale?
Speculate about situations in which this tool is the best choice.
Is there a cost?

Where are they now?

Find a previous guest of Data Skeptic. Independently research them online to see if their career has maintained momentum and relevance. If so, a blog post featuring what has happened since the time of the interview can make a great feature for our "where are the now?" style of post.

Best of Data Skeptic

After eight years and hundreds of episodes, few listeners have explored the entire Data Skeptic archives. Some of episodes are timely, and therefore, not as relevant. Yet, for many of our episodes, they still have modern relevance.

Our "Best of Data Skeptic" series will be a short essay that recommends 6-10 episodes sharing a common theme or connection. The essay should comment on lessons learned from listening to the episodes, common ideas that connect the episodes, and share at least one novel insight that is not included in the episode but enriches and extends the material. For example, if the interview guest has gone on to publish further related work, a summary of it is strongly encouraged.

Use or site's search functionality to look up common themes or ideas you feel experienced enough to write about.
Try to identify a collection of 6-10 episodes that come from many different years but share a common theme or idea.
Review other "Best of Data Skeptic" style posts to make sure yours is unique.
Write an essay that summaries some key insight gained from listening to this collection of episodes.
Find at least one novel fact or element that goes beyond the episodes and include it in your essay.

Editorial Process

You'll work directly with our founder Kyle Polich when authoring articles. Attention to detail is important, as is this guide. Thus, please stop what you're doing right now and send Kyle a message on Slack or LinkedIn letting him know you actually took the time to read this writer's guide. Your message shows you can follow directions and that's very appreciated.

Writing Checklist

Articles should meet most of the following qualifications:

Strong opening sentence - Pay special attention to your first sentence. How do you think it will appear when shared on social media? Does it entice the reader to read more? Does it accurate represent the content of the article?
Skim Ready - People's attention spans are short. Many people may skim your article by reading only the first sentence in each paragraph. Try reading your article this way and make sure it still leads the reader to a useful summary of your key points.
Have a clear insight - Every article should have at least one tangible bit of "wisdom" or insight.
Natural Conclusion. Your final paragraph should not end with a cliche such as "In conclusion" or "In summary". Carefully craft a strong final paragraph that revisits the important points of your article and reminds the reader of any key take-aways or insights they should remember.
Eliminate fluff content - Readers want fast insights. Their time is valuable. Don't waste it by padding your content with unnecessary filler text. When you review your text, consider what can be eliminated or how each sentence could be compressed.