We lost one of the greats in data science. Toby Segaran passed away on August 11. It is hard to fully capture how important Toby has been to the field of data science, especially in a life that was cut short far too early.
Toby was an inspiration to me on many fronts. His seminal book Programming Collective Intelligence could be found on nearly every desk at LinkedIn. It was the first book to capture the broad array of tools and techniques available to data scientists from collaborative filtering, clustering, bayesian filtering, support vector machines, and so much more. And then he followed it up with Programming the Semantic Web and Beautiful Data. Both of which have been fixtures on my desk since they came out.
I can’t tell you how many times I bought a copy of Collective Intelligence for new employees, people who were looking to get into the field, or executives to advocate that they needed a new type of skill set in their organization to unlock the potential of data.
When I first met Toby, I’m happy to admit that I was starstruck. And what struck me in that first conversation was how humble and genuine Toby was. And every conversation since then has reinforced that.
There are some very special people in the world where in every conversation you walk away from the conversation realizing you have been taught something important. And that was every interaction with Toby. Including that time we got to have a debate at Strata Conference.
Even after Toby’s passing, I keep learning how many things Toby was involved in and how many more conversations I wish I had with him. One of his passions was helping young women get into and advance in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). He was an incredible mentor to so many women, a quiet and understated force pushing for equality.
To support Toby’s memory, his wife Brooke, has established a fund to help high school women attend a special summer program at MIT. Participants work in teams on computer science and engineering projects. The program has been incredibly successful with 88% going on to graduate college with a STEM degree.
To me above all else, Toby personified what I mean when I say data science is a team sport. And he was everything you wanted in a teammate.
To donate in support of Toby’s vision for equality in STEM please go here. The program is also accepting other forms of gifts and checks as well — email bonnyk@mit.edu to arrange. Toby led engineering at MobileCoin, a privacy-protecting cryptocurrency, for the past 3 years. MobileCoin has graciously agreed to match donations up to $50K.
