Jake Mannix on Recommendation Systems, Physics, and the Best Answer to Our Questions Yet

In this episode, Frank and Andy talk to Jake Mannix, an accomplished data engineer who has had an amazing career. Links Sponsor: Audible.com – Get a free audio book when you sign up for a free trial! Notable Quotes Frank heartily recommends Head Strong ([00:50]) It takes a lot of time to fly from Farmville to India… ([2:40]) Audible is a sponsor! ([04:00]) Jake is a Chief Data Engineer for LucidWorks ([06:15]) Jake describes a cool Systems Development Cycle… ([10:00]) … and compares and contrasts with Customer Service and Product Engineering. ([12:00]) Sometimes this cycle works “too good!” ([13:10]) Learn more about Lucene. ([15:00]) We now search by typing questions. Not terms. ([15:40]) More about Query-Intent Classification… ([17:10]) “How Do I Do Brain Surgery” – Google Search ([18:25]) Smart search is based on closed loop analysis of “who clicks on what.” ([19:30]) One example of public search datasets: Google Trends. ([21:30]) What is a garage-door opener? ([22:00]) “We expect a lot from search these days.” ([26:10]) Searching Amazon for garage door. ([26:40]) “Data is their foundation.” ([28:00]) “I’m a data engineer.” ([31:00]) “Math is fun but it’s 5% of the work.” What is most of the work? Data cleansing. ([31:20]) On tensors… ([31:40]) Jake likes to run long distances over mountains! ([33:10]) Jake thinks self-driving cars will be cool. ([37:30]) Jake shares his encounter with the Moonies, which wins the Something Different About Yourself segment (to date). ([39:35]) Jake and his daughter like to listen to audio books. ([43:20]) Learn more about Jake on LinkedIn! ([44:00]) Jak helped build LinkedIn‘s search engine! ([44:44]) Check out the LucidWorks blog. ([45:00])