John Foreman, Data Scientist
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Why Soft Skills Matter in Data Science

1/25/2014

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I’d like to offer up some thoughts about what it means to practice data science in the real world, because merely knowing the math isn’t enough.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. My quantitative skills are middling, but I’ve seen folks much smarter than me fail mightily at working as analytics professionals. The problem is that while they’re brilliant, they don’t know the little things that can cause technical endeavors to fail within the business environment. So let’s cover these softer items that can mean the success or failure of your analytics project or career.

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Defending PowerPoint Against Tufte

1/24/2014

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 Having been a consultant to the federal government for a number of years, it was hard to not hear about Edward Tufte. The style of communication used by government consultants and their clients (particularly the military) are anathema to the longtime information design,data viz luminary. So when I was at Booz Allen, my team used to think about his perspective as a counterpoint to how we built data visualization products.

Today, I had the privilege of attending one of Tufte’s training sessions in person. I along with a few hundred other folks gathered in a hotel ballroom for a 6 hour tour of his many books and theories. 

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    Author

    Hey, I'm John, the data scientist at MailChimp.com.

    This blog is where I put thoughts about doing data science as a profession and the state of the "analytics industry" in general.

    Want to get even dirtier with data? Check out my blog "Analytics Made Skeezy", where math meets meth as fictional drug dealers get schooled in data science.

    Reach out to me on Twitter at @John4man

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    Click here to buy the most amazing spreadsheet book you've ever read (probably because you've never read one).

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