A women’s perspective on data analysis
Lessons on the impact of gender inequality from my exchange semester at the computer science faculty…
This year, I am starting my final undergraduate year with an exchange semester in Moscow. I choose this place not only because of the fairytale sceneries; rich art collections and carefully designed parks but for the math!
Online, I studied machine learning courses from this university and since I highly enjoyed watching the videos and studying the materials I decided to join them in a real classroom. At the moment, I am taking graduate courses with the Computer Science faculty and it has been great! However, I am gaining a new perspective on the call for diversity in the computer science world as the lectures go on…
My first weeks at the faculty
Imagine me, entering class, laying out my notebook and planner, ready to start class. Admittedly, I might have been a bit too eager but in general, we women like to plan everything. We need to, considering all the tasks we commonly write on our to-do lists: groceries, laundry …. It is not rocket science but remembering everything will make your brain explode!
On the contrary, sharing a house with guys shows me that there is another way. Just do groceries randomly, bulk up on easy to make dishes and see what happens…. Again in class, my lecturer does not follow a structured plan either. When I asked about it, his response was: ‘That would be a good idea… if only I had a structure in my lectures’….
The more I study Computer Science, the more I recognize this disregard of structure. ‘We just need to make it work’: is the general ambition. Naturally, there are exceptions to this generalization I just sketched. However, I do think it is no coincidence that a faculty with an overflow of men shows a lack of structure. In the remainder of this essay, I would like to sketch the positive effects of a women’s perspective on the Computer Science field.
As this field becomes more involved in major innovations not only in the technology sector itself but also in medicine, finance, education, and governmental organizations. The following topics will need more attention.
First, we women tend to care more about communication than our counterparts… Clear communication allows for saving time on explaining over and over again what is going on. Clear communication is not only beneficial to the team or inside the organization itself but is also important when models will be put into real-life decision making. We need to report for example why a loan is denied or medical decision is made. The irony is that with Data Analysis we have the explanatory power to extract valuable information from data that humans won't be able to extract. However, our job is to make sure the insights can be interpreted by humans. Therefore we need clarity and deep knowledge of the inner workings of models.
Second, we need to include others through this clear way of communicating. There are many parties involved in applications of data science in daily life. Enhancing domain knowledge is one of the great benefits of current data science methodology. This process needs active participation from both sides: the data scientists and the domain practitioners. To make data illiterate people comfortable starting to learn requires empathy and patience.
Third, information overload can be daunting especially to women. We tend to think we cannot understand something faster than man.. unfortunately! What I aim to show with my website is that data analysis can be broken up into sections. We can look at each step in more detail to figure out what should be our next action item. For example, do we need to query data from a complicated database ourself or is there already a .csv file ready for analysis. Many times, we do not even need fancy modeling to gain insightful information on the data. After proper data collection and preprocessing, we can use unsupervised learning to extract patterns from the data.
By trying to run some basic analysis or even trying to import your data properly, you can already learn a lot. Taking the process step by step, hopefully, helps to demystify this world of complicated words; amazing results and daunting math.
To conclude, this article is not at all focused on women. It is focused around the impact of more “feminine” qualities in the Computer Science world. With this essay, I hope to inspire both women and men to start incorporating some data analysis in their daily job whenever they see an opportunity to try something. Use a “masculine” mindset: who knows what will happen? Or even: this is going to be AMAZING!’. Additionally, recognize the value of clear communication and structuring your projects. Finally, try and motivate colleagues (men and women) to start running some scripts to see what comes out and focus on helping others. There is more than enough data to go around and the same goes for fancy methodology. Stand out from the crowd by showing not only your individual ability to implement the newest scientific papers but also your uplifting spirit to take the lead in this road to a data-driven society.
