Data, Consulting, and Semiconductors - MMM #21

Hi there,

Summer is finally here, as measured by my wonderful sunburn from hiking yesterday. The views were worth it though. Today I can finally bring you some original content: my overview of the semiconductor industry. The article is Part 1 in the series, with the next part covering the reasons for the current shortage.

📃 Contents:

Have a great week!

I’ll admit I’m not a big football fan (soccer for the Americans), but I am excited about these cool visualizations of the premier league by John Burn-Murdoch at the Financial Times. In this Twitter thread he goes over some of his visualizations, showing how European football has changed over time.

My favorite graph is the concentration of financing in English football over time.

Although it is brought as a novelty by some media, splits of audit and consulting practices aren’t a new thing. EY is the latest to consider a split with rumor saying an IPO is also on the table. It would mean the end of the partner model. Here’s a brief introduction to what’s going on:

Here’s a great article by MIT Technology Review discussing a new approach to self-driving cars. The approach basically revolves around “reinforcement learning”, which means that a human driver corrects the machine during a training phase after which it quickly learns to drive. The video in the article truly says it all.

And finally another article by yours truly, part 1 of my series on semiconductors. If you’re interested in the industry this will give you a high-level overview of how it works, what’s going on, and where it’s going. Next week we’ll take a look at the causes of the semiconductor shortage (spoiler: it’s not only the pandemic).

Have a great week!