Hi, I’m a data scientist and my brain is bigger than yours
While attending the big data conference I was able to attend the opening panel titled ‘The New Alchemists – the Data Scientists Panel’ (as mentioned by chasker). Anyway, a funny thing happened on my way to abandoning the booth to slack off…I learned A LOT! The panel consisted of some ridiculously bright folks including:
- Terry Jones – CEO and Founder, Fluidinfo
- Hilary Mason – Chief Scientist, bit.ly **this person was exceptionally impressive**
- Bill McColl – Founder and CEO, Cloudscale
- Bassel Ojjeh – President and CEO, nPario
The discussion centered on what kinds of insight and knowledge the companies that these panelists work for were able to divine from incredibly disparate and “unstructured” data that they collect. While none of the data collected is in any way “new” to the business, individual or organization, the volumes certainly are. Also, the statistical and pattern analyses that these appropriately titled data scientists use to put to use on these mountains of data is nothing short of amazing. Especially if you’re like me and the thought of anything more mathematically complicated than figuring out what the tip on a dinner bill makes me sweat a little bit.