How to Talk to Data Scientists

How to Talk to Data Scientists

A Guide for Executives

Jeremy Elser, PhD

How to Talk to Data Scientists: A Guide for Executives

Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2022.

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First published in 2021 by

Business Expert Press, LLC
222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-097-3 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-098-0 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Collaborative Intelligence Collection

Collection ISSN: 2691-1779 (print)

Collection ISSN: 2691-1795 (electronic)

First edition: 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Description
Every major company has or will soon have a Data Science program.
Most fail, expensively, imperiling their executive sponsors. Unfortu-
nately, executives have been misled by technologists to focus on the latest
buzzwords. Although buzzwords change—“Big Data,” “Data Science,”
“Machine Learning,” “Deep Learning,” and “Artificial Intelligence,” the
distraction from fundamentals manifests as a predictable trajectory from
exuberant program launch, to stagnation, to awkward decommissioning.
After architecting Data Science programs at over a dozen compa-
nies, across sectors, from single-application startups to Fortune500
enterprisewide transformations, Dr. Elser has formulated a reliable frame-
work for successful Data Science programs. Surprisingly, software and
algorithms are inconsequential. Rather, the key is understanding how the
data you have align to the problem you intend to solve. The business
executive understands the problem sufficiently to enforce this alignment,
while data scientists act on it. But executives tend to underestimate their
role and thereby fail to construct the necessary connective tissue with
their data scientists.
This book provides business executives with a concrete exercise, pop-
ulating a “Master Table,” accessible to nontechnical managers and data
scientists, which serves as the connective tissue between them. Rather
than teach a diluted version of Data Science, this book is action-oriented,
describing how to start projects and how to detect and fix problems—
the moments when leadership is critical. Insights are provided through
real-world examples and diagrams, including a Playbook featuring com-
mon projects. The intended audience is commercial executives (C-suite
through VP). However, ambitious mid-level managers and even data
scientists will also benefit.

Keywords
data science; machine learning; artificial intelligence; deep learning; big
data; leadership; management; executive
 Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction���������������������������������������������������������������������1
Chapter 2 What Is Data Science�������������������������������������������������������3
Chapter 3 The Master Table������������������������������������������������������������19
Chapter 4 Mistakes Machines Make������������������������������������������������23
Chapter 5 Mistakes Business Analysts Make������������������������������������31
Chapter 6 Mistakes Data Scientists Make����������������������������������������45
Chapter 7 How to Properly Deploy Data Science����������������������������53
Chapter 8 Playbook������������������������������������������������������������������������77

References�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������111
About the Author��������������������������������������������������������������������������������113
Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������115
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction
“I for one welcome our new computer overlords” was the response of Ken
Jennings in 2011 as he ceded his Jeopardy crown to IBM’s Watson, a Data
Science-driven machine. Given the sophistication of Jeopardy’s prompts,
both phrasing and content, it seemed that humans were on the verge of
being automated away. And yet, almost a decade later, there is not one
robo-CEO, or even a robotic Head of regional marketing. In fact, the list
of successful corporate Data Science programs is short; there are only a
few categories of operational tasks that have benefitted. Worse, though
most companies are reluctant to admit it, most corporate Data Science
projects fail entirely.
Having served as a long-term consultant for various Fortune
500 companies across a variety of sectors, overseeing data-driven projects
of all types spanning from mergers to marketing, I’ve detected a pattern
that differentiates successful Data Science programs from failures. I’ve
also served as Chief Data Scientist for a successful startup in the real estate
data analytics space, and the patterns hold here as well, suggesting a very
broad generality across scale. I have been the hands-on-keyboard data
scientist, been the leader of Data Science teams, and been the business-
focused project leader interacting with executives, middle-management,
and end business operators. And my conclusion is that the primary gap
isn’t insufficiently fancy algorithms or raw computing power, but rather a
gap of knowledge between the data scientists (who understand math and
not business) and the business executives (who understand their busi-
nesses but none of the Data Science). A successful Data Science program
must not merely contain both of these personas on the team, but actu-
ally exchange some understanding so an overlap exists within each team
member’s brain.
Data Science was sold as a panacea, a set-it-and-forget-it commod-
ity, a “click here to increase sales” button. The key word being “sold.”
2 How to Talk to Data Scientists

In conferences and pitch decks, executives were given access to only the
highlight reels of Data Science, usually embellished a bit as well. Even I’ve
contributed, as an entrepreneur, I recognized that part of my job as Chief
Data Scientist was to answer the question “Yes, Potential Investor, we are
indeed using all of the Machine Learning,” and then rattle off the latest
buzzwords in a confident tone. We, in fact, were successfully employing
Machine Learning in our scoring and suggestion algorithms, and I did try
to be educational, but I still had to play into the preexisting narrative of
the omnipotence of algorithms. And these algorithms can be powerful;
Amazon’s product recommendation algorithm and Gmail’s spam filtering
are competitive advantages. But the reasons for the success weren’t just in
deploying the latest sci-fi sounding technology (Machine Learning, Deep
Learning, Artificial Intelligence), or even in hiring the world’s leading
data scientists, but rather they were at the interface of those technical
elements with the business itself—its data ecosystem and its business-
specific people.

Takeaways for Chapter 1: Introduction

• Real-world outcomes of Data Science projects rarely match
anticipated success.
• Successful Data Science projects require active understanding,
participation, and leadership from business executives in
addition to technical/analytical talent.
 Index
acquisitions, 103–105 executive, 19, 21, 27, 29, 31, 32, 35,
Agile methodology, 58–60 47, 50, 56, 58, 64
algorithm
clustering, 107–109 General Data Privacy Regulation
Data Science, 50, 89, 95, 105 (GDPR), 71
dimensionality-reduction, 46 generative adversarial network
Machine Learning, 13, 23, 46, (GAN), 16
89, 103
NLP, 98
statistical, 41, 80 halo effect, 83
text-based classification, 97 human overfitting, 26–27
Youtube, 63–64 Hurricane, 24
area under the curve (AUC), 62
Artificial Intelligence (AI), 15–16 leadership, 1, 54–56, 58
list pricing, 77–80
back propagation, 14 live usage, 69–71
B2B business, 80–81, 90
B2B ERP software, 31 Machine Learning (ML), 11–14, 23,
Bell Curve, 87 25, 64
Big Data, 6–7, 71 management
business analyst, 31–43 change, 63
middle, 54
Customer Relationship Management revenue, 53
(CRM), 28, 34 manufacturing, 92–93
customer-specific pricing, 80–82 marketing, 99–103
Master Table, 19–21, 23–24
Data Science, 3, 7–11, 45–46, 50, 53, for customer-specific pricing,
54–57, 92, 96–97 81–82
cultural change and user adoption, manufacturing, 92–93
63–68 marketing, 99–100
legislation, 71–74 for modeling out-of-stock events,
live usage, 69–71 88–89
out-of-sample testing, 60–63 of promotions, 84–86
oversight and steering, 54–60 mergers, 103–105
data scientists, 11, 24, 27–28, 45–51,
54–56, 65 Natural Language Processor
Deep Learning, 14–16 (NLP), 98
deskside, 59 neural network, 14–15
Driver variable, 20–21, 24, 38, 47,
48, 51, 66, 67, 79, 81, 88 observations, 19–21, 25
Outcome variable, 19–21, 106, 107
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), out-of-sample testing, 60–63, 69
28, 31 oversight, 54–60
116 Index

Personally Identifying sales, 105–109

Information (PII), 72
pricing
customer-specific, 80–82
list, 77–80
promotional, 82–86
promotion data point,
46–48
regression, 62
research and development (R&D),
93–98
scatter plots, 39, 40
Scrum Master, 58
statistics, 3–6, 41
steering, 54–60
supply chain, 84, 86–91
Universal Product Codes (UPCs), 34,
105
Walmart, 6–7
waterfall approach, 57