Data Science and the Underinformed
With Data Science being the hot topic of Tech in 2016, and the foreseeable future, we can easily sit ourselves just off the peak of the Hype-Cycle. That said, we can see the rise of the Data Science detractors attacking everything that has been hyped for the past year or so.
This means that about twice a week I get an article from someone asking for details about an article/blog post like:
- This person/company is doing some really cool Data Sciencey stuff, how can I/we do this?
- This person said there is no such thing as Data Science, so what are you doing?
This grows old, quickly. The latest case was a Slack this morning from Kahuna's CEO, Sameer Patel, referencing a blog post titled, “There are really no data scientist in the wild !”. In this post, a seasoned engineer stated his Data Science experience is that he “played with it for a while”. But from that experience he can state that nobody in the field can claim enough breadth that they can call themselves a Data Scientist. There can be Data Science teams, but one person can not do it on their own.
Let me say here and now that this is at best an underinformed view. I have about 18+ years of academic and industry experience that fall into the realm of Data Science. I have repeatedly taken an idea that can be expressed in one to two sentences and turned it into actionable insights or a production level system. I have seen the lift/savings that these insights/systems have provide to the companies. And most of all, I did it by myself.
This is not to say there are not different types of Data Scientist (e.g. Data Miner, Algorithms Expert, or Data Wrangler) . I have repeatedly presented on Data Science teams and their makeup, and it does not make sense to lump all Data Science types in one bucket and claim "all these skills and hence be called a data scientist".
Let me digress. This is but a single case of Data Science commentary, yet it is a good example of the norm. I do not expect that I can stem the flow of these types of articles, but it may be time for a place where Data Science can be explained in non-technical terms by its practitioners. Stay tuned.
INKWELL MANAGEMENT, LLC•245K followers
9yNice post. If we think about all the mileposts of life achievement ... with getting a driver's license being at the low end, and getting a Nobel Prize being at the top, I'd argue that getting a coterie of full-time detractors is about a 6 or 7 on the proverbial 1-to-10 scale. It signifies that you're doing something of consequence. After all, they can't form unless your work matters.