Dear Fellow,
Quite a long week it has been on this end. How is it over there? Trust you still see beauty in all that you go through each day.
Since Monday, I have been talking about Data Science on my Facebook timeline and elsewhere. Quite a thrill it’s been.
Let me give you a taste of my thought process on the whole experience so far, perhaps you obtain some value by the end. I hope you do.
Reading Malcolm Gladwell and Jonathan Kozol, one thing stood out for me about the skill of both men. They told evocative stories with statistics. I mean, how is one able to capture the attention and interest of a layman with industry-specific information without letting the core of the message fade into oblivion? Well, both men did and several others I have lost memories of their names. This skill caught my attention so much that I wanted to acquire and hone it. Beyond the narratives, I wanted to really see how the numbers bear the imprints of the people they represent. How the over 200 million people in Nigeria each have a representation in the sum; or the 1.4 billion in China; and other ways we have invented to measure and explain certain phenomena.
This interest was nurtured last year. Several attempts were made to launch. Try and fail, until Alpha25 came on the scene. Alpha25 is a technology solutions hub which specialises in providing education for anyone who wants to start any tech career which is relevant in the long run century and beyond. Summarily, Alpha25, based in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria is a great place to launch on any tech career, from social media management to Data Science.
I spent the past eight weeks with Alpha25 learning the rudiments of Data Science, which includes exposure to python programming, Microsoft Excel, and some Google analytical tools such as Google Trends and the like. Quite a lot to learn and new discoveries. Not to speak of the folks I met during the course.
To the main gist.
I will be relating my thoughts on data under the following sub-headings: Another Translation of Interaction and A Quick (but Limited) Glimpse of Reality.
A Quick (but Limited) Glimpse of Reality
Your eyelids, under normal conditions, blink about 22 times in a minute. What does it mean to you? Or that one person dies every second? Or that four new births are recorded every second? It says a lot about the story we are living. It goes deeper than just the numbers. You must have imagined quite a number of things about what these numbers mean to you. If nothing, at least the deaths remind you that we are only here for a moment. The birth rates? Life is way bigger than any one of us. This is what statisticians and other data practitioners strive for: to have a better view of reality than mere assumptions and intuition. However, these human devices and processes are limited. We do not yet know how to measure certain things. You cannot put a number to my level of faith. In its limitedness, data science and analyses, help us contemplate our physical reality a little more effectively.
Another Translation of Interaction
Jesus fed many people twice in his lifetime, miraculously. Well, Jesus fed a population of men, women and children with five loaves of bread and two fish; the census for that population had an estimate of 5,000 men, excluding the records of women and children (see Matthew 14: 13-21). The first sentence only tells you that “many” people were fed miraculously: it does a little compared to when you were told in numeric terms. Or consider when we say that, by the current findings aforementioned, 240 babies are born by the time the next minute ticks from this point you are at. Not to argue about the logicality of these numbers, but you must have understood what this kind of communication does. Data—numeric information—gives you a kind of perception that mere words wouldn’t. Interestingly, a common dislike for Mathematics doesn’t easily dull this ability in us, the ability to make some sense of statistics when explained. Some poems need a lecture to really comprehend what that one great mind sees when he puts pen to paper. We have yet another way to communicate our reality—using statistics.
My mind is psyched, as Nathan Yau will say—by this understanding of the science behind numbers, and also what the numbers that communicate our realities in this physical world mean. However, there is more to this story that numbers alone won’t do.
A bit of instruction from Hugo Dyson:
“Man without art is eyeless; man with art and nothing else would see little but the reflections of his own fears and desires” _Hugo Dyson.
I forgot to add: this too—data science and analysis—is also an art.
I will eventually get better at telling you more about data science, in a manner as Gladwell and Kozol do.
Your LetterMan,
Tongjal, W. N.