Hitchhiker’s Guide to Analytics — Towels
Always know where your towel is
We’ve covered a fair bit of the galaxy so far in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Analytics. We’ve talked about improbability. We’ve talked about Marvin.
Today, we’re going to talk about some advice, repeated in the books, that I offered in the very first article in this series.
If you’re going to travel the galaxy, you need to know where your towel is.
Towels
According to the guide, a towel is just about the most massively useful item a hitchhiker can have.
Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini-raft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
Pretty versatile bit of cloth, truth be told. But that’s only part of the story.
Preparation
Anyone with half a brain can tell you that being prepared is a good thing.
Anyone with a half a mind for business can tell you that appearing to be prepared is even better.
The guide continues…
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc.
Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
If you think it sounds a bit silly, think again. It’s extremely silly.
Still a valid point.
Perception of Preparedness
What do towels have to do with analytics, particularly?
Not much, unless you’re really messy or cannot find your whiteboard eraser.
No need to overanalyze the analogy, though.
I could fill this page with advice about being prepared. Plenty of people have already done it, though, and I’m not here to waste your time.
Well, maybe a little of your time, but all in a good cause.
Tools
The market for data management tools will continue to grow.
Data architecture, data analytics, data science, data integration…
Very few people will really learn more than a dozen of these tools, and most of us will specialize in fewer than that. Some platforms come and go relatively quickly. Others are created and used for very specific niche communities.
You might not know every platform and process in use for the job you’re seeking or the project you’re planning. That’s okay.
Tools and platforms are critical. One is not, for example, going to survive in space for more than 30 second without a spacesuit, unless of course a passing ship happens to pick them up (at a probability factor of over 2 to the power of 200,000 to 1 against).
But knowing that you need a suit is more important than knowing all 3,456 brands of suit are currently available in the gift shop at the Proxima 5 outpost.
Learn the key concepts. Know the processes and yes, know the major players in your domain: data science, analytics, data architecture, or wherever your path leads. Choose the processes and platforms in which you’re mainly interested. Learn them. Study them. Practice them.
You really need to know SQL and the core concepts of data design. This knowledge will be key to any career in data.
When you are comfortable with the underlying concepts and processes, you will find that the tools and platforms become easier to learn. And others will be willing to teach you those tools, and allow time for you to learn, when you demonstrate an understanding of their processes and their purpose.
It’s worth saying again: always know where your towel is.
For more from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Analytics, check out…
