A $15K Mistake That Taught Me Humility and the Energy of Knowledge Exploration
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I made a rookie transfer a number of months again, I swore I’d by no means make. I skipped Exploratory Knowledge Evaluation (EDA) on a consumer challenge as a result of I used to be “too busy.” The dataset seemed clear, the docs appeared legit, and a deadline was looming. Why waste time plotting histograms once I may leap straight to modeling? Spoiler: it was a catastrophe. The fallout? A shaky mannequin, weeks of wasted tuning, and a misplaced $15,000 consumer contract. Right here’s the story of my epic faceplant — and why EDA’s now my non-negotiable first step.
The Setup: A Traditional Churn Puzzle
The gig was easy: construct a churn prediction mannequin for a SaaS firm. The dataset had utilization logs, assist tickets, billing historical past, and demographics — 30 options, no apparent crimson flags. I’d tackled churn earlier than, so I figured I may fast-track it. The information seemed tidy — no nulls, clear column names. EDA? Nah, I’ll skip it and dive into function engineering and XGBoost. Well-known final phrases.
