Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Are you a data scientist? Have you ever read that old green textbook? Probably not, and that is unfortunate.

I’ve been delving into data science lately. I’ve applied for a few jobs with the title “Data Scientist.” I’m not sure what a data scientist is, but much of what I have learned about the profession I learned a few decades ago in a green textbook.

The book, of course as old folks know, is “Pattern Classification and Scene Analysis” by Richard Duda and Peter Hart. I actually found a place where you can buy the first edition.

Old? Yes. Nevertheless, P(H|E) still equals (P(E|H)*P(H))/P(E). That is somewhat of an inconvenient truth, but that is the way it is.

We move onward as Intel creates yet another generation of processors with more multiplications per second at a lower $ per everything. With this, n becomes larger, hardware budgets fall, and some of those equations become possible. That is, of course, if we understand those equations in the back of that green hardback book.

In my opinion—this is, after all, my blog—you cannot be a data scientist without knowing who Duda and Hart are and what they did. Then again, I am old—apparently too old to be hired in such a new profession as Data Scientist.