April 2025 Events

🚀 Join Us for DataPhilly’s April Talks at Perpay! 🚀 We're excited to announce our next DataPhilly event in April, where we’ll go beyond A/B Tests with Causal Inference and Instrument Variables and dive into the Power of Sequential data and how it transforms data engineering and analysis. This event is in partnership with Perpay (https://perpay.com/), a company dedicated to building simple and inclusive financial products that help members create healthy habits and achieve economic stability.

Event Schedule:

Doors opens at 6:00 pm ET
6:00 - 6:30 Event start and networking, DataPhilly intro
6:30 - 7:15 Conor Gibbons: Measuring the Unmeasurable: Going beyond A/B Tests with Causal Inference and Instrument Variables, followed by Q&A
7:15 - 8:00 Andrew Holmberg: What is sequential data, and why does it matter?, followed by Q&A
After 8:00 Networking time

Speakers:

Conor Gibbons, Data Scientist @ Perpay: Measuring the Unmeasurable: Going beyond A/B Tests with Causal Inference and Instrument Variables

Summary: Correlation or Causation, that is the question. How do you measure A/B tests when you have all As and no Bs- this talk will review a simple A/B testing framework and some of its pitfalls that can occur when it's put into practice. We'll see how instrumental variables, a popular methodology from the causal inference toolbox, can step in to help overcome some of these pitfalls. A case study will show when it might be advantageous to deploy a causal framework over a simple A/B test.

Speaker Bio: Conor has been a data scientist at Perpay for the past 3 years. Previously studied mathematics and economics in Miami, FL before coming back to Philly for a Master in Data Science from Penn.

Andrew Holmberg, Data Engineering at Perpay Inc: What is sequential data, and why does it matter?

Summary: Much of the data we will work with has some form of sequence— whether it’s timestamps in logs, financial transactions, or message streams in real-time systems. The sequence of data can fundamentally change our understanding and the meaning of data because order introduces context, revealing patterns, causality, and dependencies that isolated points cannot. This talk explores why the sequence of data is important, and examples of how it influences data engineering solutions. We’ll start by going over the definition of sequential data organization and comparisons to non-sequential data. The remainder of the talk will focus on concrete examples of how sequence fundamentally changes how we analyze and process data from both a business perspective, specifically financial information at Perpay, as well as within technical data engineering services, such as how Apache Kafka handles delivery semantics to facilitate reliable processing. By working through these examples, attendees can leave better equipped to recognize and address sequence-dependent problems in their own work.

Speaker Bio: Andrew started in data engineering as an intern for Perpay in summer 2022 and came back full-time after graduating from St. Joe’s in summer 2023.