Discussion of “Experiences with big data: Accounts from a data scientist’s perspective”

Abstract

The authors have produced an excellent essay with many interesting examples based on their broad experience of data analytics. One emerging issue is the fashion for companies, especially SMEs, to employ a token or trophy data scientist; this practice can lead to a dangerous watering down of data science. Descriptive analysis of big data can lead to insight, however when corresponding end results are known, the analysis can be much richer and lead to significant impact.

Keywords:

• Insight; creative thinking; data empathy; impact; SME

This article responds to:

Experiences with big data: Accounts from a data scientist’s perspective

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shirley Coleman

Shirley Coleman is Technical Director of the Industrial Statistics Research Unit, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics, Newcastle University and a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Economics, Ljubljana University, Slovenia. She works on data analytics in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and contributed a highly ranked impact case study to Newcastle University’s Research Excellence Framework. She is the academic lead on Innovate UK funded Knowledge Transfer Partnerships developing data science capabilities, and specializes in statistical and machine learning techniques applied to company data. She publishes in trade and academic journals and is coeditor of several books. She is a past President of the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS), an elected member of the International Statistics Institute and a Chartered Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society, instrumental in mentoring early career statisticians and developing relationships with business and industry.