An explanation of some of the banners we use on the site
On the home page and above you'll see a series of banners we use on the site. Some of them are obvious, some less so. So we thought we'd put in an explanation of them here.
Our Logo
Data Science is relatively new and can be very daunting, especially when your trying to apply it to your business and data. We aim to dispel that by putting a human face on Data Science. We won't blind you with science or buzz words. We'll explain it clearly and simply, one human being to another. Knowledge and wisdom are great, but they are useless if they can't be shared. That's what the i in iDataSci is all about.
Disney Quote
This is a great quote from Walt Disney, which you may have seen if you've ever watched the film "Meet The Robinsons". They use part of it as a catch phrase or motto for the Robinson family - "Keep Moving Forward". Why do we think it's relevant to Data Science? Type "data", "scientist" & "curiosity" into Google and have a look at the results. You'll get things like "All the top data scientists share an innate sense of curiosity. Their curiosity is broad, and extends well beyond their day-to-day activities." DJ Patil, O'Reilly.com; "The four qualities of a great data scientist are creativity, tenacity, curiosity, and deep technical skills." Jeremy Howard, Kaggle; "you also want someone who has a deep, wide-ranging curiosity, is innovative and is guided by experience as well as data." Rachel Schutt, Senior Statistician at Google Research. Data Scientists are not just people who have technical skills, they also have the curiosity and the drive to look at data and start to see patterns that no one else has noticed or even imagined before.
Big Data is everywhere ...
The exact definition of Big Data is a bit fluid at the moment, but it's generally considered to be non-tabular data that is so large that overwhelms current databases and so can't be analysed meaningfully. But that's not to exclude tabular data, it may just be that your analysing it in a non-set based manner. That's big data too.
The graphic here shows a tree. Trees are made up of branches and leaves. You know what a tree looks like, every school child can draw a tree. It's a brown stick with a green blob on top of it. So if you had the x,y,z coordinates of every leaf and branch on the tree above, you would have a good idea what it looked like.
But you might not realise there is a pattern to the leaves. A Data Scientist looks for the patterns, even when they're not sure there are any. They ask what would these leaves look like if I plotted the coordinates on a sphere. And suddenly there is a map of the world. It was always there but we couldn't see it. This is what Data Science is all about.
The graphic here shows a tree. Trees are made up of branches and leaves. You know what a tree looks like, every school child can draw a tree. It's a brown stick with a green blob on top of it. So if you had the x,y,z coordinates of every leaf and branch on the tree above, you would have a good idea what it looked like.
But you might not realise there is a pattern to the leaves. A Data Scientist looks for the patterns, even when they're not sure there are any. They ask what would these leaves look like if I plotted the coordinates on a sphere. And suddenly there is a map of the world. It was always there but we couldn't see it. This is what Data Science is all about.
Data Science Tagxedo
We're great fans of Wordle and Tagxedo as anyone who's seen our business cards will know. If you haven't played around with these tools we'd strongly encourage you to do so. Not only are they fun, but they're a great way to convey lots of information in a visual form. That is a big part of Data Science. The best analysis in the world is useless if you can't convey the results to people. Not only should you be looking for new ways to analyse data, but you should always, always be looking for new and friendly ways to communicate that information to people. This is one of the fundamental parts of being a good data scientist - we look, we learn, we share.
For those of you interested, the graphic above was created at Tagxedo using a list of skills and attributes we consider important for Data Scientists. It's by no means definitive. We also threw into the mix some authors and book titles we consider exemplary. Again, by no means definite. Hence you'll see Date, Cleveland, Inmon and Kimball in there and, of course, Edward Tufte. You'll see variations of it on our business cards if you ever meet us out and about. There are 48 to collect - 49 if you count the Disney quote which gets a card all to itself, but we only give that one out to very special people :-)
For those of you interested, the graphic above was created at Tagxedo using a list of skills and attributes we consider important for Data Scientists. It's by no means definitive. We also threw into the mix some authors and book titles we consider exemplary. Again, by no means definite. Hence you'll see Date, Cleveland, Inmon and Kimball in there and, of course, Edward Tufte. You'll see variations of it on our business cards if you ever meet us out and about. There are 48 to collect - 49 if you count the Disney quote which gets a card all to itself, but we only give that one out to very special people :-)
Exploring Data Science
Data Science is about data, information, knowledge and hopefully wisdom. Books are a great source of these, but a Data Scientist has to look at all levels of the data. From the smallest detail to the grossest overview, nothing is overlooked or considered irrelevant so you start with a magnifying glass and work up.
