The Domino Effect
Domino is a small rectangular block with one side bearing an arrangement of dots, similar to those on dice. It has a line down its middle, separating its ends into two squares, each of which is blank or marked with an arrangement of spots called “pips.” Each domino has its own unique set of pips and there are 28 such pieces in a complete domino set. Domino is used to play a variety of games, both blocking and scoring. Games involving the placement of dominoes in lines and angular patterns are also popular. The most famous domino set, called the Double-Six set, is named after its unique set of six pips on each end.
Lily Hevesh has loved dominoes since she was a child. She remembers playing with her grandparents’ classic 28-piece set as a kid, setting up the tiny rectangles in curved and straight lines. She would then flick the first domino to watch them fall in a beautiful cascade.
Hevesh, now 20, is a professional domino artist who creates elaborate displays for movies, TV shows and events. Her largest designs can take several nail-biting minutes to fall, and they require meticulous planning. Hevesh builds test versions of each section, then carefully places the actual dominoes to make sure they work as a whole. She also films each domino in slow motion, so she can quickly correct any sections that aren’t working correctly.
Like the Domino Effect in fiction, Hevesh’s work is all about making a chain reaction that causes things to happen. This principle is central to the science behind Domino, a new cloud platform built from the ground up to streamline and accelerate modern analytical workflows. Traditional tools that facilitate data science best practices have not kept pace with the software engineering world, leading to friction when trying to transplant them into other tools and processes.
Domino takes a different approach to solving this problem, by building from the ground up to integrate with third-party tools through code-first APIs and connections. Its catalog of integrations is continuously growing, and includes a number of certified partners whose tools have been tested with Domino to ensure compatibility.
The platform also tracks each run of your code and data, and links together the results. This allows you to trace the path from your code, through your data, and all the way to the resulting outputs, all in a single unified workflow. It can help you track changes, manage version control and detect discrepancies. Ultimately, it’s about empowering data scientists with the power of Domino.