Where I express personal thoughts in words
It is no doubt that the sub-field of machine learning / artificial intelligence has increasingly gained more popularity in the past couple of years. As Big Data is the hottest trend in the tech industry at the moment, machine learning is incredibly powerful to make predictions or calculated suggestions based on large amounts of data.
Data scientists live at the intersection of coding, statistics, and critical thinking. As Josh Wills put it, “data scientist is a person who is better at statistics than any programmer and better at programming than any statistician.” I personally know too many software engineers looking to transition into data scientist and blindly utilizing machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or Apache Spark to their data without a thorough understanding of statistical theories behind them. So comes the study of statistical learning, a theoretical framework for machine learning drawing from the fields of statistics and functional analysis.
The future will be shaped by people who can embrace rapid change, thrive in diverse environments, and creatively problem solve as part of their everyday lives. Liberal arts skills — the ability to communicate, persevere, embrace ambiguity, work in diverse teams, and frame questions in ways that allow us to see vexing problems in new, solvable ways — are more important than ever given current global directions and trends. Being a Denison alumni makes me a better tech entrepreneur and, more crucially, makes me believe that I can make a difference in the world.
