Book - Building Data Science Teams by DJ Patil

book

DJ Patil explains the skills, tools and processes that make data science teams successful. The author explains the process behind building analytical teams at Facebook and LinkedIn.

Key takeaways

  • Being data driven means using data creatively, measuring results and experimenting.
  • Run competitions for external people and hire the best.
  • “If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it”
  • Hiring data science teams. When hiring answer those questions:

Time: Would you survive with another person locked in a small room?

Trust: Do I trust you, will you trust me? Will you do all you can to give best results?

Communication: If we’re going to spend a tremendous amount of time together and if we need to trust each other, we’ll need to communicate.

  • Every data project is a new experiment. Don’t treat it like an old product development team.
  • Data Scientists, who are they?

Technical expertise: the best data scientists typically have deep expertise in some scientific discipline.

Curiosity: a desire to go beneath the surface and discover and distill a problem down into a very clear set of hypotheses that can be tested.

Storytelling: the ability to use data to tell a story and to be able to communicate it effectively.

Cleverness: the ability to look at a problem in different, creative ways.

Links:

  • Building Data Science Teams: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Data-Science-Teams-Patil-ebook/dp/B005O4U3ZE
  • Overview: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/09/building-data-science-teams.html

I'm Valdas Maksimavicius. I write about data, cloud technologies and personal development. You can find more about me here.