Machine learning has come a long way in recent years -- from a long-marginalized field so old it still has the word "machine" in the name, to the last, best hope for making sense of our massive flows of data.

The art of 'data science' is asking the right questions; the answers are generally trivial or impossible. This talk will focus more on questions than on answers. I'll give a brief history of the field with a focus on the fundamental math and algorithmic tools that we use to address these kinds of problems, then walk through several descriptive and predictive scenarios.

Finally, I'll show one example system using bit.ly data in-depth, from the backend infrastructure through the algorithms and data processing layer to show a functioning product.

Attendees should expect to hear some good stories of data gone right and data gone awry, and walk away with a few new clever tricks.