4 Hobbies That Are Helping My Data Science Journey
Job Descriptions usually speak of the skills a company looks for in a person applying for the job. They include technical, functional, and maybe, managerial skills. But the Data Scientist job is a different ballgame. A regular JD document can’t really articulate the talents sought after in a Data Scientist job candidate. Instead, such a thing can only come from your very own lifestyle and hobbies.
Ever since I’ve began my journey in Data Science I felt it resonating well within me. And I’m grateful for that. The kind of things I do in leisure time started to impact the way I understood this data deluge in the world. I wanted to share this experience with other beginner Data Scientists like me.
So, here are the four hobbies that are making my Data Science journey more interesting:
- Reading
Book reading comes first of all my hobbies. I’m curious about various things in the world. Whenever something interests me, my reflexes make me look out for books written on that subject. I enjoy reading non-fiction books on various subjects, especially technology, economy and environment. This has helped me develop an exposure towards how various things work in the world, what economic value they produce, how people’s lifestyle generates data at each step, how there are patterns in that data, and how technology can be used to utilize that data. Such a thing is at the core of Data Science.
Talking of books, it was actually a book written by two economists that got me interested in the world of Big Data and Data Science a few years ago. Some of my book recommendations on this subject are:
Big Data, by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (this is the book I was talking about)
The Information, by James Gleick
Signal and Noise, by Nate Silver
2. Communicating Clearly
Expressing your mind is a vital aspect in everyday life. And anything that’s important for daily life is also important for Data Science.
A hobby that’s helping me in the aspect of clear communication is: browsing Reddit and StackOverflow. They’re two of the most loved social forums on the internet. Reddit is one of the coolest (and geekiest) discussion forums I’ve ever seen. It’s so goddamn addictive. Reddit has pages on all topics (well, almost!), and StackOverflow doesn’t even need an introduction, of course. What a resource to take help from experts!
The way people format Reddit posts and comments taught me great deal about information exchange. Even in Stackoverflow, the necessity for creating reproducible examples to communicate your problem clearly has become a scale for the quality of questions asked over there. Slowly, from these two websites I’ve realized the importance of clear communication in the most interesting manner.
3. Productive chit-chat over Coffee
Coffee time is break time. But it need not be limited to that. I have friends at work who are Data Engineers. We sometimes go for a coffee and engage in a general chit-chat. We discuss a great deal of fun things, such as movies, books, apps, new innovations, technology and etc. On similar lines there have been many instances where our normal talks have led us in the direction of knowledgeable discussions about various creative solutions that can be developed by engineering and analyzing open-data. We often talk about interesting articles, datasets and results of insightful surveys and analyses that we’ve come across in our random internet browsing. I felt such interaction to be a great boost to creativity that is necessary for a Data Scientist.
4. Daydreaming Ideas
Ideas are the corner stone of innovation.
Sometimes I tend to shift my mind away from the hustle-bustle at hand and simply let my mind drift into whatever it will. In that process, I try to daydream about random things that sound interesting or could make our lives easier. And if something does sound appealing to me, I make a note of it and I later approach some of my mentor-colleagues in Data Science and discuss the feasibility of that idea. In this regard, sometime back I did get an idea that involves collecting large amounts of shopping data and create a product that I had in mind which I believed would impact the way people shop. I discussed the idea with a Data Scientist and it appealed to him, too.
Maybe someday my daydreaming would actually lead me towards something concrete and make me do something cool. Only time will tell! Nevertheless, this hobby of daydreaming at times does boost my spirits and helps in keeping myself curious and creative.
