How Data Science AI Tools are Simplifying Workflows

Data scientists face a constant struggle against tedious tasks, challenging tasks, continual learning, and limited time. Their answers to the Anaconda 2020 State of Data Science report were optimistic that AI could augment their abilities but cautious about its implementation.

While 2021 saw a push towards making AI tools more accessible, the focus on using data science AI tools has intensified. Intelligent tools like Pieces for Developers exemplify this trend, aiming to empower data scientists of all skill levels by offering user-friendly interfaces and AI context-aware assistance. Pieces provides valuable help for experts, and it also allows individuals with less expertise to leverage the power of AI in their work.

The goal of a data scientist is to find and identify patterns in large datasets that may be structured (tabular) or unstructured. Each dataset requires slightly different or very different code for scrubbing, analyzing, visualizing, etc. For example, data exploration may include data quality checks for Missing values, Accuracy, Uniqueness, and Timeliness.

The data scientist must define the patterns discovered during data analysis by assigning a meaning to each pattern. The scientist can then choose an action or suggest an action to whomever needs to make the decision. There is often a focus on security in data science because often data are sensitive information that is never made public.

Thus, data scientists may be writing code or checking someone else’s code for vulnerabilities. As full-stack developers, they build, train, and deploy data-science/machine-learning models into production. Consequently, the discussion of Pieces’ benefits to full-slack developers as an alternative to GitHub Copilot is also relevant to data scientists.

Streamlining an AI Data Science Workflow

Pieces for Developers is an outstanding AI data science tool. This post describes how data science AI tools simplify your workflow by (1) doing your tedious tasks to save you time and (2) providing intelligent assistance so you can work smarter and faster.

1. Streamlining data exploration and analysis:

• Context-Aware Suggestions: Receive AI-powered suggestions for relevant tools, functions, and libraries based on your specific dataset and analysis goals.
• Contextual search for functions and libraries: Quickly find relevant functions and libraries from various programming languages, such as Python and R, for specific data analysis tasks, eliminating the need for extensive manual searches.

1. Efficient code management and automation:

• Save and reuse code snippets: Store frequently used code snippets, data manipulation scripts, and analysis functions for easy access and reuse across projects.
• Automatic code completion and suggestions: Get context-aware code completion suggestions based on your current project and the dataset you’re working with, accelerating your coding process.
• Cross-language translation: Translate code snippets between different languages, such as Python and R, allowing you to leverage functionalities from various libraries without being limited by language barriers.

1. Collaboration and knowledge sharing:

• Share code snippets with explanations: Easily share code snippets with colleagues or collaborators, including relevant context and explanations, facilitating better understanding and knowledge transfer.
• Search and learn from past interactions: Search through your previous interactions with Pieces to revisit past solutions, explore different approaches, and learn from your data science workflow.

1. Beyond code: boosting productivity and creativity:

• Ask questions in natural language: Get answers to complex data science questions and receive relevant explanations in natural language, saving time compared to searching through documentation or forums.
• Generate alternative approaches and solutions: Discuss potential solutions and approaches with Pieces, prompting you to think creatively and explore different avenues for your data analysis.
• Let AI Write the Documentation: Some users have commented that Pieces’ additions are adequate for writing technical documentation, which saves them the time normally required to write it.

1. On-device repository and privacy:

• Secure on-device storage: Sensitive information like API keys, authentication tokens, and personal annotations are stored securely on your device, adding an extra layer of privacy compared to cloud-based solutions. Pieces also offers on-device AI capabilities, built into the free desktop application.
• Offline AI functionality: Access your saved snippets and functionalities even when you’re offline, ensuring uninterrupted workflow regardless of internet connectivity.

These functionalities can significantly improve the efficiency, accuracy, and creativity of data scientists in several ways.

1. Reducing time spent on repetitive tasks like searching for data, code snippets, or solutions
2. Simplifying the exploration, analysis, and interpretation of data
3. Facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing with other data professionals
4. Encouraging exploration and experimentation by providing access to diverse functions and tools

Pieces for Developers, therefore, serves as a valuable AI copilot for data scientists, empowering them to work more efficiently and achieve better results in their daily work. The next two sections provide specific examples and quotes from an interview of a data scientist.

Data Science and AI Use Cases

As a data scientist, Ayush Kumar’s work focuses on a lot of different use cases for organizations. He previously had leveraged generative AI, such as ChatGPT. He primarily uses Python, and also JavaScript (if needed) and SQL for data analysis and mining. His tools include Anaconda for Python and JupyterLab or just a Jupyter notebook, depending on the use case. Some organizations require him to use AWS SageMaker. He has used GitHub to store all the different types of use cases.

Before using Pieces for JupyterLab, he had “no organized approach in terms of reusing.” He would remember where to find previous similar work so that he could open a Python file and find the code. He then would copy and paste the code into the new work environment.

Now he has Pieces in his workflow. In his words: “Let’s say I’m working on an image-to-text classification problem, so if the code snippet is related to that, then it basically saves me a lot of time to quickly return that result because of the labeling. … It’s quite good. … imagine that I have a snippet which is already saved from the past. So what I typically do is I just search for it right there, and then I can just build on it right by taking that code and starting writing more to it. And as I’m having any questions, the key part is that I don’t need to always search in Google for any question and go to a stack overflow. I can just use the copilot.”

Quotes About Pieces’ Benefits

The interview provided several quotes that emphasize the value of Pieces in a data scientist’s workflow.

• Often Eliminates the Need to Search: “The best part is whatever I saved recently it pops up first so I don’t need to search if I’m already working on an active use case,”
• Save and Retrieve Snippets: “My previous code snippets are in different projects, so there’s no clear tool or anything. … It’s just all over the place.” … “So feature wise, I was literally amazed. … If I have to save certain code snippets, which I can reuse, it was really amazing! How I can just quickly hit a button, copy and save, and then it saves in my Chrome extension. … Maybe after a few weeks I’m having a hundred snippets stored, and I can just quickly search for it and get the relevant result. That is pretty amazing!”
• Pieces’ Enrichments: “And also, a good part is Pieces tries to give a title for each snippet automatically, which is also very neat and in terms of the functionality, that’s one of the key beneficial parts I observed.”
• Getting Questions Answered in the IDE: “The second [key beneficial part] is the copilot. … If I’m stuck in a particular code, I do not have to go out to ChatGPT. I can just be on one single interface and take let’s say one quick snippet and right then and there ask Pieces about it.”
• Quality of Pieces’ Answers: “I think it gives better results because the ChatGPT is general and Pieces is mostly built for programmers, which is a great thing.”
• Suggests Questions to Ask: “What I’ve seen also is suggestions that it gives when it refers to a specific code snippet. It gives suggestions of what kind of questions I can ask further. That was something which I found very useful and accurate as well because the suggestions were quite good in terms of how it is reading the content. It helps me to understand what the code is about and also how I can improve the code further as well by reading through those questions. If I needed to ask any question, I can just click on it and ask.”
• Provides Related Links: “And also another thing which is quite neat is basically it gives me the related links, which is quite powerful. I don’t need to again go to Google and find it. It has the most appropriate links due to the fact that it’s meant for programmers, the LLM behind it. So that is useful as well.”

Conclusion

By leveraging Pieces’ functionalities, data scientists can streamline their workflow, improve efficiency, and focus on the core aspects of data analysis and modeling. Pieces acts as an AI copilot, offering assistance and insights, allowing data scientists to explore data, build models, and collaborate effectively, ultimately accelerating their journey towards discoveries.

In summary, Pieces as an AI copilot for data scientists offers numerous benefits.

• Save searchable enriched Python scripts in JupyterLab for reuse in different projects
• Save modeling/data-visualization snippets that can get lost in heavy Jupyter notebooks
• Save HTML or CSS snippets and paste into Webflow without having to code anything
• Save plotting utility examples
• Track data schemas for databases
• Save NoSQL and SQL queries
• Seamless integration and context-aware assistance
• Automation of tasks and code generation
• Empowerment for strategic thinking and exploration
• Effortless collaboration and knowledge sharing
• Encouragement of creative thinking and innovative solutions

In the words of the data scientist we interviewed:

“What you have already is brilliant. As I said, I don’t use a lot of new tools generally, but I have been quite hooked on Pieces already. So I’ll continue to use it often, and I know you guys release updates and fix bugs. So I think it will continue to evolve; I’m sure.”

Read more Pieces user stories like Ayush’s to learn how you can use Pieces to streamline your workflow.