The Sceptical Data Scientist

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More and more decisions are data driven now - and that’s awesome! Much better than ideologically driven, or personality driven, or “whatever mood management’s in today” driven. But it does mean we want to be confident of our analyses. And there’s a tendency to have deep faith in data science. “Look! I did a calculation! It must be true!” Numbers don’t lie. And maths is reliable.

But so much depends on the questions we ask, how we ask them, and how we test those results.

So how do we create a generation of sceptical data scientists? Whose first approach to a result is to challenge it. To try to disprove it.

We need to give them confidence in their skills, but teach them to doubt their own work.

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