The Shape of Data

Introduction

The first time I, Colleen, confronted my own hesitancy with math was when geometry provided a solution to an art class problem I faced: translating a flat painting onto a curved vase. Straight lines from my friend’s canvas didn’t behave the same way on the curved vase. Distances between points on the painting grew or shrank with the curvature. We’d stumbled upon the differences between the geometry we’d learned in class (where geometry behaved like the canvas painting) and the geometry of real-world objects like the vase. Real-world data often behaves more like the vase than the canvas painting. As an industry data scientist, I’ve ...