Date:
By Drew Conway, on July 15th, 2010
If the level of online discourse is a good indicator of whether a topic has penetrated the collective nerd consciousness, then the notion of a burgeoning "data science" discipline has taken hold. A few weeks ago I discussed where to draw the line on this idea, but recently I again begann thinking about the idea and term more critically. Yesterday, I had a wonderful discussion with a brilliant member of the data community here in New York, which focused on the delicate balance between keeping a human-friendly face on mass quantities of data-something the data scientists are meant to do-and having this new discipline make formidable contributions to our general understand of human behavior.
That is, up to this point, many of the great evangelists of data science have focused on telling stories with data. Science, however, is not about story telling, but about discovery. Perhaps I am particularly cautious of the suffix "science" because of the awkward self-consciousness the word has imbued in my own discipline. At its roots, political science was a discipline that sought to construct narratives; equal parts history, philosophy and personal experience. The name "political science," therefore, brought the ire of the "hard science" community, as they felt (perhaps with reason) that the word had been appended to the title erroneously, as there were no identifiably scientific aspects to the endeavor. While my discipline has come a long way in its application of the scientific method, and today can much more accurately be referred to as a science, there continues to be a delicate balance between discovery and story telling. What, then, can the data science community learn from this experience?
Broadly, all disciplines are measured by their contributions to our understanding of the universe. Data science-by design-is the product of measured human activity, and therefore should seek to provide new insight into human behavior. Unfortunately, the current focus of many of the community's members has been a self-congratulatory appraisal of the tools that have been developed to allow for this large-scale measurement and recording. To be a successful discipline, however, the focus must move away from tools and toward questions.
To paraphrase a famous nerd, with great data comes great responsibility; so to begin, the data science community must ask: what questions do mass quantities of measured human existence allow us to address that were never previously possible? Just the thought should be enough to inspire some to begin writing research proposal, but in effort to contribute to this discussion here are a few things I hope data science will teach us:
- How do online discourses manifest in offline behavior?
- How do we reach the "tipping point"?
- What are the ethical limits of personal data analysis?
- Do we really consume things differently?
- Can more/better data explain rational irrationality?