In my experience, data scientists crave problems to solve like I crave
Conecuh smoked sausage. You didn't study that much math and stats to
not use it!

So when you're handed a problem, you'll often bend over backward to
build a model that handles every bit of it.

You need to predict who's gonna want cheese curls and when? I'm your
scientist.

You want to optimize your outbound supply chain in light of Icelandic
Hidden People? I've got a minimax integer programming formulation
that'll handle that.

But few often ask, should we be modeling that? Should we as a business
in fact be *doing* whatever it is we're trying optimize?

When I was coming out of grad school, I decided I wanted to be a management consultant. There are a lot of terrible things that come with that industry, but I wanted to obtain a variety of work experiences quickly, and consulting is one field where that's possible.

Consulting tasks are rapid fire engagements where the client is charged high hourly rates for a concentrated load of supposed consulting firm wisdom. Oftentimes that wisdom is delivered using paint-by-numbers frameworks that people have prebuilt the powerpoint slides for, but well, companies keep buying it anyway for some reason.

Because that's the case, consultants need to appear to know what the hell they're talking about most of the time -- they need to be quick on their feet. You don't hire a bunch of consultants who fumble for words when presented with a problem only to say, "We'll get back with you."

So, if that's the kind of person you want -- quick witted, good using the back of the napkin, a winsome bullshitter -- how do you interview them? 

I'm taking a break from writing things that try to sell my book. Except for that intro sentence about my awesome data science book. And that one too.

No, I'm starting to bore myself. So I thought instead that today I'd write about postmodernism, data science, and how the two intersect. I really love the concepts that come out of postmodernism. They changed how I view everything from how I read film to how I practice my religion.

But what does postmodernism mean for my work as a data scientist? Let's step back a moment.