Hi ,

Here's something to brighten your Monday.

Who doesn't love dance videos? Like this incredible video that shows the magic that can happen when you take two highly skilled individuals and let them do what they do best (If you're short on time, the real fun starts at 1:35, but I recommend you watch the whole video).

And based on the number of views there are millions of people out there who agree with me.

But most businesses don't have dancers on their payroll.

Why?

Because even though dancers can be incredible to watch, outside the performing arts and educational settings, for most businesses they don't add value.

I recently spoke to actuarial educator Amanda Aitken on my podcast, Value Driven Data Science, and one of the topics we discussed was data science competitions, such as Kaggle and Excel model building competitions. Like dance videos, these can also be fascinating to watch on YouTube.

Yet, data science is more than just a sport. It has the potential to deliver incredible value to businesses if it is used to solve the right problems.

The challenge for businesses is to direct their data scientists at the problems of greatest importance to them.

Because if a business hires skilled individuals and just leaves them to do what they do best, they may produce magic but they won't necessarily produce value.

Talk to you again soon,

- Dr Genevieve Hayes.