Don't Let Them Tell You What You Can't Do | David Tello

From nearly getting booted from college to going on to earn a PhD in Mathematics.

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[02:32] The introduction for our guest today

[04:07] David talks to us about the struggles he faced when he emigrated to the USA from Peru.

[06:01] David talks about how mathematics turned his life around.

[06:39] Early in his career a professor told David that "it's clear that your first derivative is positive. The question is, is are secondary derivative positive?" He explains to us what this means in mathematical terms, what the professor meant using the metaphor. He walks us through the troubles he faced being on academic probation, how he tried to get a letter of recommendation, and he talks about the impact that meeting had on him.

[10:57] A meeting with a professor who told him that he wasn't good enough to be on this campus. He talks about the pain he felt when he wasn't sure what his path in life was going to be.

[11:54] He talks about his experiences at the University of Michigan and the impact of being around mathematicians that looked like him had on his career.

[12:24] I ask David what it's like to be a minority in a field filled with people who look like me (mostly Indians and Asians) and he how he views himself in this industry, and how being a minority in the field of mathematics is different from being a minority in the field of data science

[16:51] David talks about the struggles and obstacles he faced while trying to get past his PhD qualifying., how he almost didn't return back to school, and how he just kept coming back up after setbacks.

[23:46] He shares advice for how to manage the upskilling process thats required to be a data scientist.

[26:26] David tells us the one thing he wants people to learn from his story

[27:45] We jump into the lightning round: Python or R?

[27:55] Favorite classification algorithm

[28:26] Favorite question to ask the interviewer during an interview?

[29:13] The weirdest question he's been asked during an interview

[31:02] David tells us how awesome DSDJ is

[32:12] David lets us know how we can find him online