Thinking Like a Chef Will Make You a Better Data Scientist

If you haven’t seen the Netflix Original Chef’s Table yet, I couldn’t recommend it enough. Every episode highlights a different iconic chef and walks you through their incredible story & mindset. Being in Data Science, I saw an incredible amount of parallels in these different worlds and I believe us data people can learn a lot from artists.

Quick disclaimer: I am not a chef or aspiring chef myself. So my ignorance for the culinary arts is bound to show here, but the arguments I’ll make should still stand strong.

When you watch Chef’s Table, you see some of the world’s most prominent chef’s practice the art of pure creation. The chef’s are all prominent for forging their own path and innovating in their niche. Some are Michelin star winners, others are strong activists in the community, and others are just creating & living the life they desire. They all have found their calling to leave a mark in the culinary space like no other. Each highlighted chef has his/her own trailblazing story, but all follow a similar thread that we can learn from.

Start with foundations and commit time to mastering them

The prominent chefs all have their own restaurant and/or unique style of cooking, and they still practice all their fundamentals everyday. There isn’t a single chef breaking the rules that hadn’t mastered the rules in the first place. Essentially, they know the how and why to break rules in a way that’s meaningful. That simply can’t be done without a deep understanding of their foundations.

Similarly, learning cutting edge models only written about in a handful of research papers is far less valuable to beginners than consistently mastering the foundations of programming (Python) and applied statistics. It’s much less ‘flashy’ than the depths of deep learning, but there is absolutely no way around shaky foundations in this space. If you want to become really good at this craft, practice mastery learning with your foundations. Keep iterating until you truly understand your concepts as this will take you much farther than the advanced MOOCs.

Religiously practice patience and consistency

Although I’m sure younger chef’s wanted to be great at their craft with more impatience, they still committed endless hours during apprenticeships and doing the ‘dirty work’ to learn. They all have had some lucky breaks here and there, but none are exempt from the process. The considerable amount of time spent during earlier years earned them the respect of professionals in the space, allowed them to gain a true appreciation for their craft, and assisted them to truly find which niche called to them. Their recognition that success takes time does not mean they simply waited for success to come to them. These chefs forged their own path through repeated, deliberate experimentation and practice of their craft. This not only refined their skills immensely but it allowed them to build some of the world’s greatest cuisines.

Similarly, excellence in Data Science takes time. The places offering cheap and fast tickets to the finish line are scams (unless your objective is just to start learning) and anyone who’s deep in the field knows it. There are a lot of domains to be good at in this area and it’s imperative for professionals to know enough about each domain but be able to go deep in what truly speaks to them. This takes more time than most would like to admit. By ‘practice patience’, I specifically mean with yourself. Be kind to yourself and pace your learning accordingly. It’s a vast world and no one should be expected to be a master overnight.

Practicing patience is not a suggestion for remaining stationary. Consistency, especially in a field that grows as fast as this one, is incredibly crucial.

Read/Watch -> Learn -> Apply -> Document/Share -> Repeat

Don’t attempt to chase perfection, keep iterating on your Growth consistently as suggested above and you’re bound to see massive gains over time.

The quality of your ingredients > the fanciness of your oven

I’ve seen nearly all of the episodes and there is not one moment where a chef will proclaim using some super fancy microwave or oven or ‘technology’. As practitioners, I’m sure they have their own unique cutlery set that they love but none even bother to mention the tools they use. What they do often mention is how imperative the quality of their ingredients are. In fact, some acknowledge the value of ingredients so much that they start their own farm to properly care for animals & crops. Each of the chef’s will acknowledge that no matter what your cooking skills are or tools you use, if your ingredients are crap then it will show in your dish.

"Garbage in, garbage out" is not at all a new mantra for the data people, but it really cannot be stated enough. Regardless of your math, programming, and domain knowledge skills, you are at the mercy of the quality of data that you have and can curate. Using XGBoost or some Neural Network will not make up for bad data. Understand that majority of the role is ‘making data useful’ and often times that requires a strong ability to properly clean & manipulate data.

Curiosity is a superpower

Easily one of the most inspiring feats you watch is how innovative and creative these chef’s are. An important factor of their creativity is less about how they’re "just creative innately" and more about how their boundless curiosity leads them to imagine different ways of doing things. Some top-rated Michelin star chefs are known for avant-garde cuisines that fundamentally challenge the craft as a whole. They combine disciplines and senses at the table so a guest is having more of an ‘experience’ at their restaurant rather than just eating food. This is done through tenaciously asking questions of why things are currently being done how they are today, how one could reimagine different parts of that process, and how they can deliver a new experience in a way that is desirable to the customer. This constant state of curiosity is what allows these chefs to transcend cuisines beyond ‘traditional’ methods and consistently push the craft forward.

Similarly, in Data Science the field is tremendously vast and consistently being improved upon. There is no perfect way of doing things. If you don’t have a curious mind, it’s a really uncomfortable place to be in because you truly need one to survive in this space. The amount of knowledge and tools out there to learn and master seemingly grow by the day. Additionally, there’s always a new, better way to do what you want to do. If you don’t apply curiosity to keep growing and innovating your corner of the domain, it becomes really difficult to remain competitive and valuable. This may sound daunting for those not naturally curious, but I will also say that having a naturally curious mind will also do wonders to enrich your life. It keeps your mind sharp while also giving it room to grow. Don’t try and boil the ocean with an endless amount of questions either. Be focused and target a few specific questions related to the space you’re in or project you’re working on. Satisfy that curiosity and learn enough about a given topic to apply it, and then keep moving. It all starts with curiosity, but that one trait can really take you to astronomical heights.

Before & after anything else, be an artist

This is probably the main reason that I even wrote this story. If you watch the show carefully enough, you see how technical of a craft the high-end of cooking can be. It’s a true science in being able to understand how flavors can come together and be amplified, how different ingredients can truly shine in different environments, and how to experiment fast. It’s also a true engineering craft in being able to understand how to construct a brand new recipe for a new dish, what is the most effective process to run and collaborate in the kitchen, and how to create a large number of dishes in a time crunch. Even with all of this, the parts that each chef focuses on the most are 1. who they are and their ‘why’, 2. the lens they see the world in and how they’d like to share that with others, and 3. their passion to create meaningful dishes that bring people together and show them something new in life. In other words, out of all the science & engineering that goes into the craft, they start & end with the art of it.

As a Data Scientist, you are fundamentally making data useful in varying degrees. You are bringing together disparate and disconnected items and through rapid experimentation at scale, you arrive at insights and, ideally, value. Due to how difficult the craft can be, it’s easy to get lost in the technical beauty of it all. The fancy new technique or cutting-edge model is where our eyes go to, but you’re better off thinking like an artist focusing on what dish you’re actually serving to someone. What is their experience? Do they understand what you’re trying to tell/show them? Are their lives enriched for having interacted with you and your expertise? As hard as all the science & engineering is, being a good artist & telling meaningful stories with data is by far a much harder practice. It goes far beyond strong data visualization too; this skill is the ability to resonate with and influence a person who may have no idea about your world at all.

You’ll hear a lot that so much of Data Science is ‘just data cleaning’, and I feel this is quite the gross oversimplification of the craft. It would be synonymous of telling a chef that cooking is only cutting and preparing ingredients. Even if technically true, it completely misses the point and the art of the craft which is the piece that makes it meaningful. You don’t go to a restaurant because a chef is phenomenal at cutting up their ingredients; you go because they tell a beautiful story through the process of: responsibly sourcing and curating disparate ingredients, designing a recipe that brings flavors together in a way that you’ve never seen before, creating a dish that looks visually beautiful on the plate as it’s served to you, and, most importantly – the food tasting good.

The science and engineering pieces of the craft are absolute necessities, this isn’t a case to diminish their value. I’m simply stating to start & end with art.

Favorite episodes

I purposely tried not to specifically call out scenes or examples from the episodes because I don’t want to ruin the magic for future viewers. With that being said, here are some of my favorite episodes and I highly recommend to watch: