Cathy O'Neil: Data scientists must reject roles that treat them as implementers
Cathy O'Neil · Panel discussion // Data Driven NYC #12 // Jan 2013 · Dec 5, 2013 · at 58:18
Cathy O'Neil was not on this episode. A recording of them was played into it, so these are their words but not an appearance on the MAD Podcast. It still counts as said, and it is kept out of every score on their page.
Cathy O'Neil, mathematician and author, discussing the role of data scientists within business organizations during an audience Q&A.
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“When mathematicians ask me how do you become a data scientist, I give them a lot of advice, but one piece of advice I have is if you interview with a business who thinks that you're an implementer and not a business person, then don't take that job.”
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More from Cathy O'Neil
O'Neil: Data science is a war of moneyed interests against vulnerable people
“I think of data science as And the general modelization of everything in sight, including education, including getting a job insurance, health, it's a war. And we're losing. Like we are, this is a war of the people who have money and can go hire data scientist…”
O'Neil: Data problems that bypass feature selection will not yield financial returns
“Feature selection is always gonna be very important. If you have something that's so easy to answer that you don't have to care about feature selection, you're not gonna make any money doing it.”
Cathy O'Neil: Bad data science stems from using algorithms without understanding them
“I think a lot of bad data science happens because people are like, I don't really know how this algorithm works. I'm hoping when I press this button, something good comes out. And look, it converged, so it must be okay.”
O'Neil: The hardest data science role is conveying fundamental uncertainty
“The hardest role you have with data scientists, and this is when you get the label negative, is when you're saying, we actually don't know the answer to this, and you don't either, and no one knows the answer, and we can't pretend to know the answer.”