Interview: Ali Vanderveld, Groupon on How Data Science is Changing the Global E-commerce Marketplace
Tags: Advice, Ali Vanderveld, Career, Competition, Data Science, Ecommerce, Groupon, Interview, Marketplace, Mobile
We discuss the tools used for data science, competitive landscape, journey from astrophysics to data science, advice, skills sought in data scientists, and more.

First part of interview
Here is second part of my interview with her:
Anmol Rajpurohit: Q8. What software and technologies did you use for forecasting demand and prioritizing merchant acquisition?

Ali Vanderveld: On the data science side we have a Teradata database and a Hadoop cluster, and we most commonly use R and Python for modeling. The internal tools that bring it all together are in a combination of Ruby and Clojure. The front end is an Ember application.
AR: Q9. Since more than half of Groupon’s business comes from mobile devices, from an Analytics perspective, what major differences did you observe in customer behavior over mobile platform (smartphones, tablets, etc.) compared to web platform (laptop, desktop, etc.)?

AV: Mobile customers tend to be more engaged than our web-only customers, purchasing more frequently and spending more. Though mobile purchasers are more engaged, it takes longer for a mobile customer to activate.
AR: Q10. How do you distinguish Groupon from other competitors such as LivingSocial and Amazon Local?
AV: No one else has the scale and breadth of deals as Groupon. We’ve evolved from a deal-of-the-day site into a global ecommerce marketplace with

AR: Q11. What motivated you to be an astrophysicist and later, a data scientist? Do you see any similarities between your past work in astrophysics and current work at Groupon?
AV: When I started college I actually wanted to major in music performance but I eventually decided to switch to something that I thought

AR: Q12. What is the best advice you have gotten in your career?

AV: It’s advice I’ve gotten on multiple occasions -- to always be flexible and adaptable. It’s advice I’ve put into practice in my career path changes from music to physics to data science. It’s also important advice within the data science field itself; everything has to be scalable and the only way to keep up is to constantly experiment with the latest technologies.
AR: Q13. What key qualities do you look for when interviewing for Data Science related positions on your team?

AR: Q14. On a personal note, are there any good books that you’re reading lately, and would like to recommend?
AV: I read it a few years ago when it first came out, but I plan to re-read it again -- “Bossypants” by Tina Fey, one of my personal heroes.

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