

The Three Sexy Skills of Data Geeks - dhotson
http://dataspora.com/blog/sexy-data-geeks/

======
verdant
The hard part would be to convince a business that these skills provide value.
It can be a large benefit to a company to effectively leverage its own data,
and having someone that can not only extract and interpret, but also put the
right visualizations in the hands of the decision-makers would be a great
benefit to help a company, it can be hard to get those that hire to buy into
the soft benefits. Its usually a major obstacle in any business intelligence
project.

~~~
tom_b
+1 for bringing up the hard part. I've worked on several big data warehouse
projects where it was tough to make business managers understand that even the
simplest correlations between different fact types across dimensions (using
those terms in the Kimball sense) provided ROI.

Forget visualization and deep statistics usage. You simply can't get there
until you have executive commitment and belief in the value proposition.
Personally, I wish I was a better evangelist for these skills.

~~~
eru
I read about several management consultancies that offer such a quantitative
approach for lots of money. Perhaps its easier to sell from the outside?

------
lallysingh
The point on statistics is well made. I recall my cryptography professor
calling it "Sadistics." Still, I continue to read more & more on it, as it
just keeps getting more and more useful.

Performance measurement of largish applications often comes down to
statistical questions.

------
binarycheese
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

\- Benjamin Disraeli

~~~
lrajlich
all the more reason to understand it...

------
noss
I do not think the "sexy" they refer to is the same kind of "sexy" that a geek
would want to improve in.

I know I was disappointed that it wasn't a list of common geek skills that
people are secretly drawn and attracted to.

~~~
dkarl
Helping people share your geeky pleasure is indeed a sexy skill, especially if
they're a little less geeky than you. Everybody wants to understand.
Basically, if you make people feel a little smarter, they'll love you. Data
visualization has that power.

------
jsonscripter
I've never heard anyone call XSLT elegant before.

~~~
brendano
he was sarcastic in the post

------
jmtame
fail to reject h0.

