Vin Vashishta: a big difference between interesting and useful

Cindy Tonkin build analytics capability through soft skills. Your data science team can break down silos, be even more effective in honing in on what's strategically important and handle people even better than they do now: Talk to Cindy on +61 412 135 426 [email protected]

Vin Vashishta is a big name in data science.

Listen to the podcast here.

He believes a huge percentage of the advice you’re given is wrong, that there’s a huge difference between interesting and useful in data science and that cupcakes can sometimes be a good thing for your analytics practice!

I’ve been called an idiot by a lot of PhDs

Cindy Tonkin:                 Ladies and gentlemen with me today I have Vin Vashishta. He is phoning in from Reno. I am in Sydney, in Australia. We’re going to talk about what makes for smarter data people.

Vin, I looked at your LinkedIn profile. You’re a big name in the data science world. Tell us about what you do.

Vin Vashishta:                Well I’ve been in technology for, what’s it been now, 24 years and I spent the last almost 10, wow, it’s been a while, spend the last going on 10 years in data science and machine learning, a bit of deep learning over the last couple of years, as well. Not entirely sure how I got to be a big name. I am often more opinionated than most people like and most of my opinions are not things mainstream data sciences like. Not entirely sure why somebody doesn’t like me, because I’ve been called an idiot by a lot of different PhDs. There are-

Cindy Tonkin:                 I think that’s the badge of honour in the data science world, though, to be called an idiot means someone’s actually thinking about your stuff isn’t it?

Vin Vashishta:                That’s true. You do have to make a PhD pretty angry for them to acknowledge your existence.

Cindy Tonkin:                 What are your habits and routines, in terms of working smarter? Are there things that you do to keep yourself together and functioning?

Work smarter: know the business objective

Vin Vashishta:                There are. It’s a data scientist’s hole. It’s like an entire rabbit hole every day that you could decide to go down or you could remain focused on, not so much the task at hand, because a lot of the times the task at hand requires rabbit holes. But really understanding what the business objective is or, in some cases, what the personal objective of the project is. That one goal, keeping that in mind, and being able to understand it in the first place is really how you can work smarter, because there are a million different things you can do. Everything from what datasets that you use, to your choice in algorithms, to how you design an architecture. I mean, I’m stuttering because it’s just so much you can do in anyone of those.

Cindy Tonkin:                 There is so much, absolutely.

Vin Vashishta:                Anyone of those could lead you down a rabbit hole that takes up, not just one day, but one or two weeks, and doesn’t really lead to anything fruitful.

Cindy Tonkin:                 Yes, you’ve got to, basically, make decisions early on about knowing what the outcome is and sticking to the things that are going to get you towards that outcome. Is that the basic concept?

Vin Vashishta:                Yeah, it really is keep the goal in mind, because a lot of the activities you can do have a cool factor. It would lead to something interesting, but it wouldn’t lead to something productive. It wouldn’t lead to something that you could actually use from a business sense. There’s a huge difference between interesting and useful in data science. Almost everything’s interesting very, very, very, very few things are useful.

Routines to keep smart: the single person stand up

Almost everything’s interesting very, very, very, very few things are useful.

Cindy Tonkin:                 Interesting. What about your personal routines? How do you keep well? How do you keep smart? How do you keep nice?

Follow this link to read the rest of the transcript and listen to the podcast.

Cindy Tonkin builds analytics capability by building the soft skills of your analytics and data science teams. Call her on +61 412 135 426 [email protected]