I think Riley's article brings a lot of clarity regarding the role of data and 'data nerds' in digital products
Data is more than dry numbers
In the past, data was often referenced in cold, numeric terms. It was construed purely as a measurement tool, which paints data scientists as Spock-like characters expected to have statistics memorized and available upon request. Interactions with us would therefore tend to come in the form of a request for a fact: how many listings do we have in Paris?What are the top 10 destinations in Italy?
While answering questions and measuring things is certainly part of the job, at Airbnb we characterize data in a more human light: it’s the voice of our customers. A datum is a record of an action or event, which in most cases reflects a decision made by a person. If you can recreate the sequence of events leading up to that decision, you can learn from it; it’s an indirect way of the person telling you what they like and don’t like – this property is more attractive than that one, I find these features useful but those.. not so much.
Data needs to be interpreted and contextualised
data science is an act of interpretation – we translate the customer’s ‘voice’ into a language more suitable for decision-making.
So, data has become an ally. We use statistics to understand individual experiences and aggregate those experiences to identify trends across the community; those trends inform decisions about where to drive the business.
Insights must be communicated effectively
when decision-makers don’t understand the ramifications of an insight, they don’t act on it. When they don’t act on it, the value of the insight is lost.
we’re ultimately in the business of decision-making, and found we couldn’t do this successfully when silo’d