Step Away from the Computer

Some of the best advice I received in graduate school came unexpectedly and unsolicited, but was very valuable nonetheless. One of my PhD committee members told me in his distinct accent, "Terry, turn off the computer". I had never heard such an unimaginable concept especially for a program heavy in data analytics. I had supposedly mastered the operation of the software we were using for data analysis to the point that I had lost sight of the original intent of utilizing that software and computers in general. My mentor was correct; I needed to step away from the computer to regain focus on what I was trying to do.

I am not trying to diminish the necessity of computers and software; both are mission critical to data analytics. However, the opposite is also true; data scientists sometimes need computer-free time to gather perspective. Recently, I have seen practicing data scientists open up their laptops way before they had any chance of pondering the task at hand. Granted that in the data mining world, it is often argued that letting the data speak for itself is preferred to any theory-driven analytics; however, there is a clear line when the analyst just needs to go offline.