Building data products from the perspective of a PM

[2016-08-23 Tue 19:20:29] speaker: Michael Zhang, Grab event: Data Science SG

Estimating the time of arrival of a Grab car.

Manually check the ETA vs ATA plots (distance vs time)

• driver waiting before starting
• driver searching for the passenger
• driver makes a wrong turn

ETA is less than ATA because it did not account for

• driver did not start immediately
• driver did not go in the right direction
• incorrect traffic estimation

Improve ETA by estimating of how long the driver starts moving, transit, pick up.

Correction factor to futher improve ETA

• geohash
• time of day
• weather
• driver behavior

Organizing the team

• clear responsibility and speed
  • platform team
  • data tracking team
  • feature enginerring team
  • data science team
• plan data tracking, integrity, and consumption
  • keep it simple
  • batch process over real-time
  • prioritize data growth
• hire for the right skill-sets
  • data scientists who can write production level code

Building an internal map service

• lat/lng points to map routes
• filter noisy data