50 self-explanatory data science quotes by thought leaders you need to read if you’re a Data Scientist, – covering the four core components of data science landscape.
Data science for anyone can seem scary. This made me think of developing a simpler approach to it. To reinforce a complicated idea, quotes can do wonders. Also, they are a sneak peek into the window of the author’s experience. With precise phrasing with chosen words, it reinstates a concept in your mind and offers a second thought to your beliefs and understandings.
In this article, we jot down 51 data science quotes that were once shared by experts. So, before you let the fear of data science get to you, browse through the wise words of industry experts divided into four major components to get inspired.
Data strategy
If you successfully devise a data strategy with the information available, then it will help you to debug a business problem. It builds a connection to the data you gather and the goals you aim to achieve with it. Here are five inspiring and famous data strategy quotes by Bernard Marr from his book, “Data Strategy: How to Profit from a World of Big Data, Analytics and the Internet of Things”
- “Those companies that view data as a strategic asset are the ones that will survive and thrive.”
- “Doesn’t matter how much data you have, it’s whether you use it successfully that counts.”
- “If every business, regardless of size, is now a data business, every business, therefore, needs a robust data strategy.”
- “They need to develop a smart strategy that focuses on the data they really need to achieve their goals.”
- “Data has become one of the most important business assets, and a company without a data strategy is unlikely to get the most out of their data resources.”
Some other influential data strategy quotes are as follows:
6. “Big data is at the foundation of all of the megatrends that are happening today, from social to mobile to the cloud to gaming.” – Chris Lynch, Former CEO, Vertica
7. “You can’t run a business today without data. But you also can’t let the numbers drive the car. No matter how big your company is or how far along you are, there’s an art to company-building that won’t fit in any spreadsheet.” Chris Savage, CEO, Wistia
8. “Data science is a combination of three things: quantitative analysis (for the rigor required to understand your data), programming (to process your data and act on your insights), and narrative (to help people comprehend what the data means).” — Darshan Somashekar, Co-founder, at Unwind media
9. “In the next two to three years, consumer data will be the most important differentiator. Whoever is able to unlock the reams of data and strategically use it will win.” — Eric McGee, VP Data and Analytics
10. “Data science isn’t about the quantity of data but rather the quality.” — Joo Ann Lee, Data Scientist, Witmer Group
11. “If someone reports close to a 100% accuracy, they are either lying to you, made a mistake, forecasting the future with the future, predicting something with the same thing, or rigged the problem.” — Matthew Schneider, Former United States Attorney
12. “Executive management is more likely to invest in data initiatives when they understand the ‘why.’” — Della Shea, Vice President of Privacy and Data Governance, Symcor
13. “If you want people to make the right decisions with data, you have to get in their head in a way they understand.” — Miro Kazakoff, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan
14. “Everyone has the right to use company data to grow the business. Everyone has the responsibility to safeguard the data and protect the business.” — Travis James Fell, CSPO, CDMP, – Product Manager
15. “For predictive analytics, we need an infrastructure that’s much more responsive to human-scale interactivity. The more real-time and granular we can get, the more responsive, and more competitive, we can be.” Peter Levine, VC and General Partner ,Andreessen Horowitz
Data engineering
Without a sophisticated system or technology to access, organize, and use the data, data science is no less than a bird without wings. Data engineering builds data pipelines and endpoints to utilize the flow of data. Check out these top quotes on data engineering by thought leaders:
16. “Defining success with metrics that were further downstream was more effective.” John Egan, Head of Growth Engineer, Pinterest
17. ” Wrangling data is like interrogating a prisoner. Just because you wrangled a confession doesn’t mean you wrangled the answer.” — Brad Schneider – Politician
18. “If you have your engineering team agree to measure the output of features quarter over quarter, you will get more features built. It’s just a fact.” Jason Lemkin, Founder, SaaStr Fund
19. “Data isn’t useful without the product context. Conversely, having only product context is not very useful without objective metrics…” Jonathan Hsu, CFO, and COO, AppNexus & Head of Data Science, at Social Capital
20. “I think you can have a ridiculously enormous and complex data set, but if you have the right tools and methodology, then it’s not a problem.” Aaron Koblin, Entrepreneur in Data and Digital Technologies
21. “Many people think of data science as a job, but it’s more accurate to think of it as a way of thinking, a means of extracting insights through the scientific method.” — Thilo Huellmann, Co-fFounder, at Levity
22. “You want everyone to be able to look at the data and make sense out of it. It should be a value everyone has at your company, especially people interacting directly with customers. There shouldn’t be any silos where engineers translate the data before handing it over to sales or customer service. That wastes precious time.” Ben Porterfield, Founder and VP of Engineering, at Looker
23. “Of course, hard numbers tell an important story; user stats and sales numbers will always be key metrics. But every day, your users are sharing a huge amount of qualitative data, too — and a lot of companies either don’t know how or forget to act on it.” Stewart Butterfield, CEO, Slack
Data analysis and models
Every business is bombarded with a plethora of data every day. When you get tons of data, analyze it and make impactful decisions. Data analysis uses statistical and logical techniques to model the use of data:.
24. “In most cases, you can’t build high-quality predictive models with just internal data.” — Asif Syed, Vice President of Data Strategy, Hartford Steam Boiler
25. “Since most of the world’s data is unstructured, an ability to analyze and act on it presents a big opportunity.” — Michael Shulman, Head of Machine Learning, Kensho
26. “It’s easy to lie with statistics. It’s hard to tell the truth without statistics.” — Andrejs Dunkels, Mathematician, and Writer
27. “Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.” Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President, Gartner Research
28. “Use analytics to make decisions. I always thought you needed a clear answer before you made a decision and the thing that he taught me was [that] you’ve got to use analytics directionally…and never worry whether they are 100% sure. Just try to get them to point you in the right direction.” Mitch Lowe, Co-founder of Netflix
29. “Your metrics influence each other. You need to monitor how. Don’t just measure which clicks generate orders. Back it up and break it down. Follow users from their very first point of contact with you to their behavior on your site and the actual transaction. You have to make the linkage all the way through.” Lloyd Tabb, Founder, Looker
30. “Don’t let shallow analysis of data that happens to be cheap/easy/fast to collect nudge you off-course in your entrepreneurial pursuits.” Andrew Chen, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz,
31. “Our real job with data is to better understand these very human stories, so we can better serve these people. Every goal your business has is directly tied to your success in understanding and serving people.” — Daniel Burstein, Senior Director, Content & Marketing, Marketing Sherpa
32. “A data scientist combines hacking, statistics, and machine learning to collect, scrub, examine, model, and understand data. Data scientists are not only skilled at working with data, but they also value data as a premium product.” — Erwin Caniba, Founder and Owner,Digitacular Marketing Solutions
33. “It has therefore become a strategic priority for visionary business leaders to unlock data and integrate it with cloud-based BI and analytic tools.” — Gil Peleg, Founder , Model 9 – Crunchbase
34. “The role of data analytics in an organization is to provide a greater level of specificity to discussion.” — Jeff Zeanah, Analytics Consultant
35. “Data is the nutrition of artificial intelligence. When an AI eats junk food, it’s not going to perform very well.” — Matthew Emerick, Data Quality Analyst
36. “Analytics software is uniquely leveraged. Most software can optimize existing processes, but analytics (done right) should generate insights that bring to life whole new initiatives. It should change what you do, not just how you do it.” Matin Movassate, Founder, Heap Analytics
37. “No major multinational organization can ever expect to clean up all of its data – it’s a never-ending journey. Instead, knowing which data sources feed your BI apps, and the accuracy of data coming from each source, is critical.” — Mike Dragan, COO, – Oveit
38. “All analytics models do well at what they are biased to look for.” — Matthew Schneider, Strategic Adviser
39. “Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the web like deer on a freeway.” Geoffrey Moore, Author and Consultant
Data visualization and operationalization
When you plan to take action with your data, you visualize it on a very large canvas. For an actionable insight, you must squeeze the meaning out of all the analysis performed on that data, this is data visualization. Some data visualization quotes that might interest you are:
40. “Companies have tons and tons of data, but [success] isn’t about data collection, it’s about data management and insight.” — Prashanth Southekal, Business Analytics Author
41. “Without clean data, or clean enough data, your data science is worthless.” — Michael Stonebraker, Adjunct Professor, MIT
42. “The skill of data storytelling is removing the noise and focusing people’s attention on the key insights.” — Brent Dykes, Author, “Effective Data Storytelling”
43. “In a world of more data, the companies with more data-literate people are the ones that are going to win.” — Miro Kazakoff, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan
44. The goal is to turn data into information and information into insight. Carly Fiorina, Former CEO, Hewlett Packard
45. “Data reveals impact, and with data, you can bring more science to your decisions.” Matt Trifiro, CMO, at Vapor IO
46. “The skill of data storytelling is removing the noise and focusing people’s attention on the key insights.” — Brent Dykes, data strategy consultant and author, “Effective Data Storytelling”
47. “In a world of more data, the companies with more data-literate people are the ones that are going to win.” — Miro Kazakoff, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan
48. “One cannot create a mosaic without the hard small marble bits known as ‘facts’ or ‘data’; what matters, however, is not so much the individual bits as the sequential patterns into which you organize them, then break them up and reorganize them'” — Timothy Robinson, Physician Scientist
49. “Data are just summaries of thousands of stories–tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.” Chip and Dan Heath, Authors of Made to Stick and Switch
Parting thoughts on amazing data science quotes
Each quote by industry experts or experienced professionals provides us with insights to better understand the subject. Here are the final quotes for both aspiring and existing data scientists:
50. “The self-taught, un-credentialed, data-passionate people—will come to play a significant role in many organizations’ data science initiatives.” – Neil Raden, Founder, and Principal Analyst, Hired Brains Research.
51. “Data scientists are involved with gathering data, massaging it into a tractable form, making it tell its story, and presenting that story to others.” – Mike Loukides, Editor, O’Reilly Media.
Have we missed any of your favorite quotes on data? Or do you have any thoughts on the data quotes shared above? Let us know in the comments.
