Hi ,

​

When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a magician. I spent hours practising and performing magic tricks.

And although I never achieved my childhood dream of performing a magic show in Las Vegas, it turns out the time I spent working towards this dream was good training for my actual career as a data scientist.

I recently interviewed professional data scientist and amateur magician, Dr Peter Prevos on Value Driven Data Science.

According to Dr Prevos, there are many skills in the magician's toolkit (or should I say top hat?) that are transferrable to data science, including innovation, problem-solving and presentation skills.

In the words of Dr Prevos:

"Businesses can learn from how magicians innovate. To be a good innovator, you have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to fall flat on your face. Now every magician has (failed) on stage. If you want to be a good innovator, be willing to make a fool of yourself. Those sorts of things are the lessons that the world, perhaps, can learn."

Here's the thing...

Few people grow up to be what they wanted to be at age 10, but that doesn't mean the skills developed in pursuing that dream need go to waste.

What skills from your childhood can you apply to make you a better data scientist today?
 

Talk again soon,

Dr Genevieve Hayes.

p.s. You can listed to the full interview with Dr Peter Prevos HERE.
 

All past emails are available in the archive.