A few times in a year we invite software engineering students to visit our facilities, ask questions and learn about our daily work. This time I was asked to talk a bit about Data Scientist position i.e. skills, technologies, etc. This time I got an idea I could use memory palace. Instead of learning the most important points of my speech by heart, I could benefit from the technique called memory palace.
This is my memory palace plan for the talk.I use my flat experience with some augmented details.
On the front door I see many signs of different technologies indicating there are many keywords, technologies and techniques. Some of the students may have heard of Business Intelligence, data analysis or data mining.
After stepping inside I see two possible ways, which means data analysis could be divided into two categories. The first one is all about history (door on the right and my colleague explaining historical data to Bonaparte sitting on a toilet). Second category is the future (crystal ball showing the future). Based on historical performance we can predict the future. Now it’s time to give some examples. On a couch there is a huge lottery ball, my nearest grocery shop logo and sleeping marketing manager. You can predict lottery results, price increases in the market and find out what products might be interesting to our clients. Short anecdote about SPAM - the contrary to well run marketing. Via letters companies try to sell something to us, persuade us to register somewhere or ensure we need to enlarge something. Behind the window I see catapults and guys trying to hit the target. This means that we want to guess what customers want to buy - hit the target. Elaborate on this a bit. Then move towards a huge survey on the kitchen table and introduce to structured and unstructured data (20/80). Then on another table scientist makes some crazy stuff, I need to talk about an emerging role, mix of developer and mathematician, data scientist. Data Science consists of 8 parts (8 is written on the wall behind crazy scientist). On a table next to scientist I find graphs which indicates I need to covers statistics. On the eating table there is a huge database. Behind the window I see a car which recognizes road signs. I elaborate a bit on pattern recognition. Through the next window I see a guy digging - data mining. On my way to the sleeping room I meet Terminator - I talk about machine learning. On a bed I find millions of dollars and here is where I want to introduce business knowledge and domain understanding. A tablet on my bed reminds my of visualization techniques and tools needed to make stuff beautiful and professional. The last view - plane (I now it looks like a bird) with a Big Data commercial dragging behind. I talk about huge misunderstandings behind Big Data.
Very shortly, this was mytalk to students about data science and business intelligence. I was able to remember it at a record pace.