

Hunch engineering is answering questions on formspring - estromberg
http://www.formspring.me/huncheng

======
joshes
Question: How do you control false positive rate mining correlations?

Answer: We use false positives as a negative feedback mechanism which refines
our models. We have dials for precision and recall depending on how much we
want to risk looking stupid.

I would be highly interested in seeing how _strongly_ this feeds into their
system. A bit too much of the false positivity taken into account could make
them look way too cautious and hinder any sort of adventurous recommendations.
I'm sure they have taken this into account, though.

------
jdp23
Interesting response to "What do you think about TDD?" "I'm assuming you mean
test driven development...taken to an extreme I think it doesn't make much
sense for a consumer web startup. Probably makes more sense if I was building
the space shuttle."

Space shuttles are traditionally built with formal methods and SEI CMM Level
5, so it's pretty hard to see them going the agile route. Conversely if done
well, TDD's great for a web startup because it makes it so easy to evolve.

------
j2d2j2d2
Some of their answers seem a little nonsensical. Python, for example, is not
blazingly fast, but it is good for some things like I/O bound systems.

------
andrewljohnson
The linked page breaks the back button. Why would they do that?

