Hi ,
Last week, I shared five pieces of advice, provided by my guests on Value Driven Data Science in 2023, for data scientists looking to create business value from
data.
Here are five more pieces of advice to help you in 2024:
1.
Narrow Your Focus
"Start with the problem and focus on the value that a solution to that problem can deliver. Then go back to the data and say OK, what is the minimum set of information that I can extract and how can I extract and use this for solving my problem? Most probably it won't be enough, but at least you will immediately reach your scope and then you can reiterate and
extend the set of data that you're using, and iterate again and again and again. You will get the result much faster than looking first for all your data and spending 80% of your time just cleaning it." - Dr Alessandro Negro, Chief Scientist at GraphAware and author of Knowledge Graphs Applied.
2. Speak Up!
"Sometimes the people at the top just don't understand the consequences of their decisions. Data scientists, because they understand the storytelling elements of data and understand what it can and can't do, are in a unique position to be able to speak to senior leaders and explain to them what's at stake if
they get it wrong. They know what the risks are and can suggest a better path forward. If you're in that kind of position and you feel like you can speak up, chat to the decision makers in the business and try to guide them on the right path." - Dr Kate Bower, Consumer Data Advocate at CHOICE
3. Put Yourself in the Customer's Shoes
"School will only teach you so much. Get your hands dirty, do a lot of independent learning, study on your own as well as in the classroom, but also try to think outside the box. Put yourself in the shoes of the very people you are trying to understand. It's through that process you
will be more effective and more efficient because data analytics is all about understanding context." - Ben Shapira, Founder and Chief Product Officer at Dinero.
4. There Are No Shortcuts
"A lot of people who haven't really gotten their hands dirty with data and learned how to be a data scientist, think that it's easy. That you have data, you have a problem and you're done. And the fact of the matter is, there's no shortcuts. You have to engage with the problem in a really deep and fundamental way, and if you think that's wasted effort, you don't understand how hard real problems are." - Prof Michael Littman,
Professor of Computer Science at Brown University and author of Code to Joy
5. DIY Data
"Don't take the data as a given. Don't
take it as fixed. You can make your own data set." - Jeroen Vendrig, Chief Technology Officer at ProofTec
If you missed any of these interviews the first time around, you can find all the episodes of Value Driven Data Science HERE or on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify or Google Podcasts.
Talk again soon,
Dr Genevieve Hayes.
p.s. Value Driven Data Science returns for 2024 on Thursday 8th February.
