But who are the new ninjas?
"growth hackers", whatever that means
Sounds like someone who prunes trees and shrubs.
"Did some growth hacking on the hedge funds, bagged it, 100% organic product..."
Data scientists are the new rockstars
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: Data scientists are the new rockstars
#22Bullshit. "Big Data" and "Data Scientist" are the latest buzzwords like Web 2.0 and Java were during their ORA hype-r eras. There is a lot more data. There are a lot more tools and technology to deal with data. There is a need for high quality people that understand how to handle data. But there are no rockstars, there are people that have passion and spent years learning and teaching their craft. But they aren't roc…
My main objection to it is that this rebranding of statistics (and machine learning I suppose) obscures the deep political connection statistics has[1] and in so doing obscures the fact it's going to have major political ramifications across this century. Happy clappy summer of code donations from Google to EFF or the Sunlight Foundation are entirely not proportional to the extremely high level of abuse that could po…
Thanks for this. It's a humbling comment that puts reality into perspective: there are several ethical and moral challenges we coders are gonna be put through in this century, far, far removed from the Silicon Valley bubble and it's love of ads. And it's this love of ads (read, millions and billions of dollars) at the expense of enriching corporations and tearing down privacy that worries me a lot about our future, if it's going to depend on programmers' current moral standards--though really, it's all human nature, it's not like we're a different breed. But we definitely are more informed than the average citizen, and more of us should take responsibility for increasing freedom and basic human conditions, as opposed to selling social local deals.
Re: Data scientists are the new rockstars
#23If anyone from the site reading this, didn't work on my nexus galaxy. A dumb share popover took up the whole screen and didn't scroll away.
thanks, DiggDigg issue catching us out :S
Re: Data scientists are the new rockstars
#24How do you call the phenomenon that leads statisticians to rename themselves "data scientists"? I propose the Freud-inspired "science envy".
Re: Data scientists are the new rockstars
#25How do you call the phenomenon that leads statisticians to rename themselves "data scientists"? I propose the Freud-inspired "science envy".
[deleted]
Re: Data scientists are the new rockstars
#26What troubles me most about the title "Data Scientist" is that it really means "Statistician" or "Statistical Analyst". There are so many interesting things you can do with lots of data, stats is but one of them. What do we call people who are good at some of the other disciplines?
I've spent bits of my career working with fairly large data sets at one time or another, and providing discovery, insight and analytic tools into that data, but very little of it seems to have anything remotely to do with what the job descriptions for "Data Scientist" are asking for.
Consider this, building a very large graph of the internet, then using various models on that graph to find unique and actionable insights: such as finding routing bottlenecks for a video delivery service, involves lots of data, lots of scientific like exploration, yet isn't a "data scientist" job by the job reqs.
How about this, building a text parser that can finely categorize and make recommendations for a research organization based on millions of grant proposals, all categorized into various "mission silos" that research organization is built around. Not a "data scientist" job.
Analyze multi-lingual news stories to build a real-time alert system for conflict analysts. Not a "data scientist" job.
Building a tool that can scan multi-spectral aerial imagery and automatically extrapolate man-made structures from natural, catalog all of the different vehicle makes and models, and generate a predictive model of commuting patterns, or make recommendations for housing development based on perceived socio-economic conditions? Not a data-scientist job.
Collecting information on who propositions who from a dating web site, normalizing the data for population and writing a report on the findings? That's a "data scientist's" job.
It's not that that kind of work isn't valuable, only that there are so many other kinds of things that involve what might intuitively be called "data science" that calling just the one discipline "data science" is doing a disservice to what should be an amazing discipline -- part Computer Scientist, Part Analyst.
Re: Data scientists are the new rockstars
#27This is a pretty fluffed up article that missed the wave of "data scientists are awesome" articles last year. But I think it's important to not underestimate the shift that has been happening. The race to automate tasks has always been accelerating, but it hit an inflection point a few years ago when mainstream business people realized what current technology can achieve. Pretty much every industry I've seen has been…
I agree. The article was meant to be a high-level introduction to the phenomenon for the Dutch audience. They missed that wave. I had know idea it was going to end up here:) Apparently a controversial title can still trigger lingering emotions:) Most people still don't seem to have a clue what is possible, though.
IMO something is accelerating/changing and we hit an inflection point. It does help to give it a denominator. It's human, not just marketing. I'm sure one time people thought compsci and software engineering were redundant or pretentious. I'm still ambivalent about the name data scientist.
Re: Data scientists are the new rockstars
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slippery slope though. We might need to throw in ninja, craftsman, hipster, and guru while we're at it, too.
that sounds like an awesome slope to slip down on. let's get rid of all of those ridiculous terms. how about we just use the oh so boring "professional" instead? i want respect from society for my work, not a cute pet title co-opted from other industries, where they can use these terms with a straight face and without rolled eyes from the audience.
Unfortunately even "professional" gets a bum rap from some quarters: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1631100714 ;-)
Re: Data scientists are the new rockstars
#29Please, let the term "rock star" die.
Not so fast. For now, it's a helpful indicator of shallow ideas.
Re: Data scientists are the new rockstars
#30Bullshit. "Big Data" and "Data Scientist" are the latest buzzwords like Web 2.0 and Java were during their ORA hype-r eras. There is a lot more data. There are a lot more tools and technology to deal with data. There is a need for high quality people that understand how to handle data. But there are no rockstars, there are people that have passion and spent years learning and teaching their craft. But they aren't roc…
As long as we're throwing buzzwords around, why not [self post plug alert!] switch over to Analytics Syndication Services? I've envisioned it as a paradigm shift to align your core competencies. http://tech.theswamp.in/post/2013/04/01/analytics-syndicatio...