I’ve been meaning to give Matthew Hurst a shout out as one of the original social media hackers. His posts over at Data Mining regarding d8taplex and other data hacking exploits definitely provide an interesting perspective.
As an apprentice mad data scientist, Hurst’s 5 Hidden Skills for Big Data Scientis resonates. To wit:
3. Invest in Interactive Analytics, not Reporting. When you construct reports about your data products, you are answering a fixed set of questions. This is useful for monitoring, but it doesn’t provide a way to get at the unknown unknowns. It is only through interactions with data (often called slicing and dicing) that pockets of interest (problems and opportunities) are discovered. Rich, interactive tools may be perceived as a low priority and never quite got to. Avoid this peril!