The Impact of Behavioral Biases to Real-World Data Science Projects: Pitfalls and Guidance
Data science projects, unlike their software counterparts tend to be uncertain and rarely fit into standardized approach. Each organization has it’s unique processes, tools, culture, data and in-efficiencies and a templatized approach, more common for software implementation projects rarely fits.
In a typical data science project, a data science team is attempting to build a decision support system that will either automate human decision making or assist a human in decision making. The dramatic rise in interest in data sciences means the typical data science project has a large proportion of relatively inexperienced members whose learnings draw heavily from academics, data science competitions and general IT/software projects.
These data scientists learn over time that the real world however is very different from the world of data science competitions. In the real-word problems are ill-defined, data may not exist to start with and it’s not just model accuracy, complexity and performance that matters but also the ease of infusing domain knowledge, interpretability/ability to provide explanations, the level of skill needed to build and maintain it, the stability and robustness of the learning, ease of integration with enterprise systems and ROI.
Human factors play a key role in the success of such projects. Managers making the transition from IT/software delivery to data science frequently do not allow for sufficient uncertainty in outcomes when planning projects. Senior leaders and sponsors, are under pressure to deliver outcomes but are unable to make a realistic assessment of payoffs and risks and set investment and expectations accordingly. This makes the journey and outcome sensitive to various behavioural biases of project stakeholders. Knowing what the typical behavioural biases and pitfalls makes it easier to identify those upfront and take corrective actions.
The speaker brings his nearly two decades of experience working at startups, in R&D and in consulting to lay forth these recurring behavioural biases and pitfalls.
Many of the biases covered are grounded in the speakers first-hand experience. The talk will provide examples of these biases and suggestions on how to identify and overcome or correct for them.
Outline/Structure of the Talk
- The roadmap of a typical data science initiative. (5 mins)
- Common biases and pitfalls, and how to handle them. (10 pitfalls x 2-3 min each) - 25 mins
- Case study (one case study that will provide many of the pitfalls) - 10 mins
- Recap & concluding remarks - 3 mins
Learning Outcome
- Improve ability to assess risk in data science project proposals and plans
- Improve ability to manage data science projects and data scientists.
- Improve at setting expectations with stakeholders.
Target Audience
Data Science Team Leads/Managers
Prerequisites for Attendees
Elementary knowledge of data sciences. Past experience with analytics and data science projects in Industry.
Video
Links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohit-lotlikar/
schedule Submitted 5 years ago
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