It's true. Of all the things I look forward to at work, teasing meaning out of numbers is one of my favorites. I can totally get lost in it - I achieve flow when I'm deep into an analysis. Data is like earth that must be tilled and fertilized and seeded and weeded and harvested to produce a crop of bona fide answers. I live for this shit.
Some people are good at working with other people to get things done. Some people are good at working with designs to make the world look and act the way it does, and the way it will tomorrow. I am lucky enough to understand exactly what I'm good at, and to have fallen into a career where I can do it.
Yup. A friend who designed speaker systems the hard way - by measuring them - had as his motto "More Data. Less Bullshit."
ReplyDeleteI tried playing with your title. You got it right. It is probably better to "Fucking love data" than to "Love fucking data".
ReplyDeleteMy first grad school advisor would walk around booming "SHOW ME THE DATA". He said his advisor had done the same thing.
ReplyDeleteDave - the study of fucking data was arguably pioneered by Masters and Johnson. Mad props and all, but I'm not that kind of scientist.