NYC Financial Crime Task Force, a.k.a the “get shit done people”

I just got back from DataGotham, an awesome conference for the data science community in NYC. All of the talks were really great and are worth checking out on YouTube, but the one I want to mention was by Michael Flowers of the NYC Financial Crime Task Force. I was aware of the NYC FCTF because one of the quants, Lauren Talbot, gave a great interview on my advisor’s blog.

This was a talk that made me want to jump out of my seat and go save the world using statistics (OK maybe I’m exaggerating… but not by much). It was so refreshing to see data analysis being implemented on a broad scale to make things immediately better for everyone involved. And I think that it’s stories like these that make people excited about statistics. Who doesn’t want to be one of the “get shit done people”?

(An aside: if you’re not initiated with the data science label, there was a really interesting talk by Harlan Harris discussing just that, complete with a survey analysis! And another aside: I’d love to see what the NYC FCTF is doing on Wall Street – I mean it is in their banner photo! – but sadly this wasn’t discussed…)

Enjoy! I assure you it’s worth the 20 minutes.