When I was graduating college in the mid 2000s, the word in job descriptions that most commonly appeared alongside “data” was “analytics”. However, around 2010, the phrase “data science” (HBR link) got coined, and took over the world in the next five years. Nowadays it seems everyone wants to be a “data scientist”

However, where is the science in data science? And why are so many people with PhDs in pure science moving to data science?

To understand this better, I bring back one of the old guests of Data Chatter. Dhanya P is an aerospace engineer turned neuroscientiest turned data scientist. She is co-founder of Messy Fractals and Kabaddi Adda, and a Senior Scientist at Sapien Labs. Dhanya talks about her journey from neuroscience to data science, why a PhD is good training for data science, and what the “science” in data science is all about.

You can follow Dhanya on Twitter at d2a2d

Show Notes:

00:02:30: Dhanya’s journey from Aerospace Engineering to Neuroscience to Data Science
00:07:00: Why data science and not academia after PhD
00:11:45: Defining data science, and how she approaches a problem
00:16:00: How a PhD prepares you for a career in data science
00:20:00: Challenges in industry due to academic background
00:23:00: Learning to code
00:26:50: The challenges of working with someone else’s data, and proxies
00:37:30: Communicating results
00:42:45: Are ex-academics better at certain kind of Data Science roles?
00:46:00: “Entropy” in the brain
00:51:30: Revisiting the biomechanics of Kabaddi players, and communicating data to sportspersons

Data Chatter is a podcast on all things data. It is a series of conversations with experts and industry leaders in data, and each week we aim to unpack a different compartment of the "data suitcase".

The podcast is hosted by Karthik Shashidhar. He is a blogger, newspaper columnist, book author and a former data and strategy consultant. Karthik currently heads Analytics and Business Intelligence for Delhivery, one of India’s largest logistics companies.

You can follow him on twitter at @karthiks, and read his blog at noenthuda.com/blog