Madison Avenue Sets Data Science Straight
August 15, 2015
The baloney manufactured by the data science crowd has amazed me. I look for comments about making statistics and math easy in my old familiar places. I don’t pay attention to the wonderful world of advertising.
I followed a link a story in Advertising Age. I like the name. We are indeed in the age of advertising. The title of the article is “Don’t Confuse Business Intelligence with Real Data Science, Says AOL Platforms Chief Tech Officer.”
Yes, AOL, now a unit of an even more exceptional outfit. Even better, AOL has been piloted to the pinnacle of success by a Xoogler.
The main point of the write up is that some folks are confusing “different data practices.” The article says:
People sometimes confuse business intelligence with data science, Mr. Demsey [Verizon/AOL wizard] said. Although cloud computing and open sourced frameworks have served to democratize data science, there’s a big difference between using data to create charts and graphs and actually combining and transforming data, the work of a data scientist, he said. Data science is predictive while oftentimes business intelligence employs backward-looking data, he added.
The passage I highlighted is this one:
Expect the sophisticated marketer’s increasing focus on connecting digital and offline dots to factor in heavily to the integration of AOL and Verizon. “We’re in the process right now of putting things together in a way that is authentic and makes sense,” he said, noting Verizon’s “human, technology, customers and data.” “It’s a continuum. It’s never going to be over.”
I agree that folks are confusing the data (big, real time) with methods (analytics, “intelligence”). The Madison Avenue world certainly knows the difference between the oxymoronic business intelligence concept and the nebulous data science thing.
The problem is what I learned from the article is that Verizon is going to connect dots. Is this business intelligence? Is this data science? Is this more baloney?
Stephen E Arnold, August 15, 2015
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