Rebranding Data Scientist
It involves Magic and Augury. Wait! Hear me out:
We all know that Data Scientist is a silly name. What kind of science doesn’t use data? Vagueness is the first sin of good science, and we’re putting it right in the name!
I’m proposing a new job title: Table Reader. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Table Reader is reductive. I don’t just read Tables! I do other things!” Okay. I’m sure you do. Really. I believe that is your truth.
By “Reader”, I do not mean a “Book Reader,” of course. I mean it in the Mystical sense. You aren’t “Analyzing” (vague and Latinate). You’re taking a Reading, tracing the palm lines of the Table and considering what the flight paths of birds might have to say (using weather as an instrument). Google Sheets has been missing a spiritual layer.
Data Scientist doesn’t say anything about what we actually do. Table Reader evokes.
A question arises. You consult the Tables for guidance, perform the Rites, Read the signs, and tell folks what the Tables say.
Each word is a strict improvement. Table is better than Data because it specifies the kind of data we look at. Data covers a lot more than tables, but the job doesn’t.
Reader is better than Scientist because it evokes Magic and Mysticism, which is both more inspiring and accurate. I’m not saying the Art has a lot in common with Divination, but it has more in common with that Practice than Chemistry.
For example, a computer is a Technology. If we both give it the same instructions, it’ll do the same thing. My nature and experience don’t affect the way it operates.
Magic is different. If the extensive literature on the working of Magic has established anything, it is that the Practice is particular to the individual. For example, Magic can be acquired via being born a wizard (Rowling, J.K. 1997), or you can be gifted powers by a strange lady who spends a lot of time in the woods (Map, Walter c. 1220), or be possessed by the Gods (Pythia, c. 1400BC), or learn to speak the language and meanings of the Nonmen, all but destroyed in the First Apocalypse, when the No-God, Mog-Pharau, rose millennia ago (Bakker, Scott R. 2004)…. we’re getting off track.
The point is that if we give the same Tables to two Table Readers, we’ll get different answers. It requires experience and intuition to know which signs are real and which are misleading, which models “make sense” and which don’t. So, Table Reading is an individual Art.
But, you say, “There is Math involved!” Sure, the Practice may use aspects of Science or Technology, like Mathematics, but consider:
If an Augur foretells the future by learning the biology necessary to identify the different parts of an animal’s entrails and from these gains insights into the length of Caesar’s reign, do we say he is doing Science? In part. But the Science is only necessary to construct the components of the Magic. The Science serves the Magic. So, clearly, Augury is a Magic.
In a similar way, the Science serves the Table Reader’s judgement as he or she divines whether the treatment is good or bad, whether to run this in logs or levels, whether we’re going to make next quarter’s targets or not, what kinds of fixed effects to use, and whether there are any plausible excuses to explain this product’s failure that should not obviously have been foreseen by you or your stakeholders (I kid, I kid).
So, we need a name that evokes Judgement and Practice, not Science: Table Reader.
I also considered “Table Teller”, but it sounded too authoritative, too crafted. In the good version of our profession, we merely read what the Tables tell us. We don’t instruct the tables, like the Medium doesn’t instruct the Spirits. We listen to Them.
Thanks for reading!
Zach
Connect on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/zlflynn.