Book-Smart vs Street-Smart Data Science: 4 ways to make analytics matter

Data scientists and analysts love to discuss technical details of their work. Unfortunately, those details may be lost by the stakeholders who ultimately make business decisions; or, analysts may miss the “big picture” of a project because they focus excessively on the minutia.

By taking a “street smart” approach to analytics, rather than a strictly academic perspective, data scientists can maximize the business impact of their work.

In a way, “street smart analytics” is basically applying the Zen of Python principles to how we communicate insights. In fact, the quotes below are sourced from these principles. Leveraging these mantras, let’s consider ways we can get street-smart!

1. K.I.S.S.

Simple is better than complex.

Complex is better than complicated.

Keep It Simple. Not everyone will be analytically savvy. Some audiences may know nothing of INNER JOINs, normal distributions or p-values. But our goal is to speak to our entire audience. We can achieve this through steps such as:

• Creating simple, canned explanations for technical definitions. For instance, “when we apply an INNER JOIN, we’re only keeping users who are in Group A and Group B.
• Making reporting tools easy to explore and understand. Limit your landing (or default) reporting page to key metrics…