
The best data scientists are curious and entrepreneurial - abhishektwr
https://plus.google.com/114723964985237592593/posts/KAnEjivD88j?imm_mid=0786ea&cmp=em-orm-strata-nov14-newsletter-direct
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feralchimp
"The best X's are curious and entrepreneurial."

a) well okay, sure, for large swaths of X

b) ...and so are the worst X's. And when X is "data science" we should be
interested in telling those stories too

The leaked HBGary emails provide a pretty clear example of entrepreneurship
destroying one particular curious mind's capacity for doing hard science.
Money isn't evil, but it's a filter on perspective that in many, many people
turns their capacity for skeptical research to absolute shit.

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spaznode
Since I work daily with a group of these "data scientists", I can only assume
your comment indicates that you have no idea what you're talking about.

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pessimizer
That's not an argument, just a weird insult.

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spaznode
You're right, it was an insult.

It is nonetheless still true.

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kevinalexbrown
Defining Data Science as "exploration and invention" and Business Intelligence
as "the same old reporting on the top of big data" is just silly. You can't
just say "Data Science is inventive, innovative, and great Statistics" but
"Business Intelligence" is old, crotchety, bad Statistics. That just seems
pedantic to me.

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spaznode
The thing is that you really ~can~ just say that. Statistical analysts aren't
f-ing around when it comes to analyzing data and are capable of some extremely
magical things that you can't just "pick up" randomly simply by working on
data a lot.

Just like you can't randomly understand the fundamentals of software
engineering like data structures & algorithms without first studying the
concepts directly.

Hey I'm totally fine if people don't like what they're reading though. It
gives me a competitive edge for any company I work for if everyone else is
against the idea. ;)

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kevinalexbrown
Because it's frankly the same thing, you're just defining one name for the
people who do it well, and one name for the people who don't.

I work with extremely large data sets. Yay. I can call myself a Data Scientist
to be in vogue and gain "competitive edge" with people who care about the name
I call myself instead of what I'm capable of. I can emphasize that I didn't
just "pick up" things randomly, but that I got an abstract mathematics degree.
But I'd prefer to be known by what I can do, not my particular label.

"No, no I'm not a _programmer_ , I'm an _engineer_ , which gives me a
competitive advantage!" -- Whatever, how well can you code?

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spaznode
I work with multi terabyte data sets myself as a software engineer, but after
working with these people am not under the mistaken impression that I'm a data
scientist of the kind described in the article.

I wouldn't have known this about myself before working with and seeing what
they do firsthand of course. That's kind of my main point.

