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Bitten by the “Data Science Bug”
When data science becomes an obsession.
For the longest time, I have wondered why some data scientists spend every waking moment of their day obsessively consuming knowledge, honing their skills, participating in competitions, creating hobby projects, and generally expanding their horizons. Meanwhile, others are more comfortable with the status quo and exploiting current skills to solve the problems that come their way.
Of course, any data scientist worth their salt will be expanding and improving their skills continuously; that is one of the prerequisites for becoming a good data scientist in the first place. This is not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the people that have to keep learning more. I’m talking about when it becomes almost a disease, and you are compelled to spend every ounce of free time you have, regardless of how tired or busy you are, reading more papers and writing more code.
In strength sports, there is a concept of the “Iron Bug” — if “bitten” by this bug, it is no longer a question of how to keep training year in and year out; it instead becomes a question of how one could not do it. Not working out suddenly costs more energy than actually doing the workout. We can find similar obsessions across other fields, but I find that “data science” holds a particular allure. During…
