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The Difference Between a Good

Data Scientist and a Great One

The difference between a good data scientist and a great one is like the difference between a
lightning bug and lightning.* Indeed, they are two separate beasts.
Good data scientists work to discover hidden insights in vast quantities of often disparate
and often poor‐quality data. It is a demanding job. Still, good data scientists discover new
insights into customer needs, the causes of variability in processes, and how the business is
performing that others cannot. They are rare and extremely valuable contributors.
Great data scientists think about things differently. They are not simply interested in finding
new insights in the data. They are interested in developing new insights about the larger world
around them. Of course, they use the data to do so. But they also use anything else they can
get their hands on.
To illustrate, consider predictions for the winner of the 2016 presidential election. As of
November 7, 2016, pollsters predicted a Clinton victory over Trump with high probability:

Pollster Probability of Clinton win
538 (Nate Silver): 72%
New York Times: 86%
Princeton Election Commission (PEC): >99%

Importantly, none of these pollsters actually conducted polls themselves. Instead they built
models using the raw data provided by others. We’re impressed with Nate Silver and 538
and, to his credit, Mr. Silver acknowledged the weaknesses in polling in his final note just
before the election. Although we do not know who did the work, we are confident that the
Times and the PEC employed good data scientists. For a review of election surveys, see
Kenett et al. (2018).

*This Chapter is based, in part, on a pair of Harvard Business Review digital articles by Redman (2013a, 2017a).

The Real Work of Data Science: Turning Data into Information, Better Decisions, and Stronger Organizations,
First Edition. Ron S. Kenett and Thomas C. Redman.
© 2019 Ron S. Kenett and Thomas C. Redman. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Companion website: www.wiley.com/go/kenett-redman/datascience