Faces of Data Science: MARCO MAIER

In this series, real life data scientists with an outstanding skill-set are being portrayed and introduced. This is the first introduction of the series FACES OF DATA SCIENCE.

Marco Maier

I start this series chronologically with regard to my own journey to data science, and therefore I will begin with the first data scientist I ever met: Marco Maier.

Marco has been working at University (WU Vienna) for 6 years as a research associate and currently finishes his PhD in Psychology, dealing with Dirichlet and Dirichlet-Multinomial regression models. He started out doing research and data analysis in COHAVE, a project about consumer behaviour, decision making and recommender systems at the University of Klagenfurt. Later he also did data/database management and data analysis at IBG GmbH.

Marco shows us that great data scientists can come out of psychological institutes of Universities and therefore he is the great pride of the “psychological” community.

Funnily enough, Marco greatly disapproves of being called a data scientist. Although I call him a data scientist here, Marco is quite irritated by this label and rejects it, but more about that, later.

This is how I met Marco…

I met Marco years ago when I was still an undergraduate at university, shortly before my final exam. In my thesis, I developed a test instrument using IRT (Item Response Theory) with the R-package eRm. After a certain point I was confused by some outputs and distressed beyond compare. Despite already having submitted my thesis, the perfectionist I was back then needed to understand every detail, and after having asked about everyone I knew I got Marco’s number from a friend. I was fed up because I knew I was already quite good in Statistics and IRT, and the approximately 20 stats experts I asked for advice couldn’t help and mostly didn’t even get my (very concrete and detailed) questions. Being desperate enough, I gave it a shot, unknowingly called Marco and voila:

Marco wasn’t only an outstanding expert in IRT, no, Marco programmed parts of the R-package eRm himself. It was one week to go until my big exam, and Marco spent days and nights (literally!) teaching and testing me, and answering all my questions. Getting to know him so close to my final exam was bad for me – I wished I had met him earlier – but certainly good for him because I would probably have bombarded him with even more questions.

With a lot more knowledge (and a lot less confidence; Marco taught me that there’s a lot more to know) I got brilliant results in my exam. Ever since then, Marco has been my number 1 adviser, reviewer and examiner whenever it comes to statistics and R. It’s right to say that Marco “raised” me statistically, which kind of makes him my professional parent. His enthusiasm for statistics and his deep, deep knowledge paired with his creativity on when and how to use certain statistics (that most people never have heard of) is contagious and has encouraged me a great deal on my way to data science. Besides, Marco has turned into a very good friend.

“He speaks R” as fluently as his native Austrian German, as he proved by co-authoring a book on R  and applied statistics (which – for once – I could review for him), and many projects he worked in at WU Vienna.

Marco’s Skillset

Marco is an outstanding Programmer (especially in R, occasionally C and sometimes Fortran) and Statistician (especially… in pretty much every field).

His subject matter expertise is eclectic – which is quite clear when looking at his publications (for instance, he did the statistics for a paper on the life expectancy of sterile male mosquitoes – I told you: eclectic!)

… His statistical understanding is so deep that it’s dangerous to ask him for advice as his explanations (often starting by deriving formulas from zero) can make you question if you have any idea about statistics to begin with. Once Marco thinks the chosen approach is “fair enough”, that means that the method of choice is bullet proof in the respective context (Thank you, Marco, for also reviewing my PhD thesis!). Despite that, Marco has a great sense of humour and can be seen as an anecdotal evidence that there is a high correlation between being a good musician (Marco plays the guitar) and being mathematically inclined (e.g., being a data scientist). 

Marco and Data Science

As mentioned earlier, Marco does not think of himself as a data scientist. However, he also doesn’t consider himself a “pure” psychologist anymore as his focus has shifted to statistics and programming and his work has been covering multiple disciplines, with fewer and fewer psychological applications (e.g., mosquitoes). So he is generally not too enthusiastic about being labelled and he thinks that most definitions of the label “data scientist” are either too broad (where the DS is required to be an expert in business, statistics, programming, IT, …) or there is little difference to what statisticians actually do. So many people have been accused of calling themselves data scientists when per definition they're not - the opposite is the case with Marco. 

He's an amazing statistician, a skilled programmer and innovative and creative when it comes to identifying use cases. 

With roots in psychology, he knows a lot about human behavior (and therefore all types of behavioral indicators) which - in combination with his data science skills is a high value asset for all types of companies and fields (retail, targeted marketing, etc.)

Whether he agrees to the title or not - from my perspective he's an amazing data scientist with a very specific and outstanding skill-set. One fact of that I'm sure is that Marco has an exciting career ahead.

We (psychologists) owe Marco for smoothing the way from psychology into data science, building the bridge between various (not exactly typical) skills.

Marco's skills are much more impressive than any Venn Diagram could ever show.

Keep up your brilliant work, Marco, and continue to be a wonderful example for all the young and motivated current and future psychology students, who have no idea how quantitative psychology is and that they will never hear about Freud. ;)  

Marco and his career are exceptional in many ways. That makes him more special than a unicorn.