I spent a week earlier this month at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM)—an annual convocation of “data scientists”, as some of these number crunchers now deem themselves. But most statisticians remain ‘old school’ as evidenced by this quote:
“Some time during the past couple of years, statistics became data sciences older, more boring sibling that always played by the rules.”
— Nathan Yau*
I tend to agree—being suspicious of changes in titles as a cover for shenanigans. It seems to me that “data science” provides a smoke screen to take unwarranted leaps from shaky numbers. As the shirt sold at JSM by American Statistical Association (ASA) says, “friends don’t let friends extrapolate.”
*Incorrectly attributed initially (my mistake) to Carnegie Mellon statistics professor Cosma Shalizi, who was credited by Yau for speaking up on this subject.
#1 by Wayne on August 15, 2012 - 9:08 am
While at the QPRC 2012 one of the common topics was the title of Statistical Engineer. The relationship between a statistical engineer and a statistician was likened to the relationship between an engineer and a physicist. Statisticians develop the math/test/methods while statistical engineers pick out the methods and develop tools to implement them in the field. Maybe it is a good thing to differentiate the field of statistics by giving a name to the nature of the actual work.
Here’s a quote I use a lot, “there are liars, damned liars, and statistics, the job of the statistician is to make sure statistics are telling the truth.” I’m not sure what a data scientist does.
#2 by Cosma Shalizi on August 15, 2012 - 10:02 am
While I am not very happy with the name “data scientist”, and have said so at some length (http://bactra.org/weblog/925.html), I have certainly never said the phrase you attribute to me.