When data is your life

There is no point bringing any preconceived notions to Jer Thorp’s Living in Data. You will be wrong, but rewardingly so. The book is a kind of autobiography, but one focused on data gathering and manipulation. Thorp is a gifted data scientist, though he’ll tell you it’s all just trial and error. He didn’t set out to do this kind of work. He’s not a quant; he has no doctorates. But he is also far more human; there’s a huge dollop of passion that makes all the difference in the world in his personality, in his world, and in his book. He’s exhausting to keep up with.

You might not think of data design as risky or in any way exciting. A lot of sitting around, developing eyestrain. But Thorp gets invited to plunge the depths of the ocean in a deep-diving sub, count elephants in Africa from the air as well as on the ground, and was nearly rammed by a raging hippo in a flimsy boat on the Okavango. He also got to design the 9/11 memorial display by effectively fitting the 2800 names of the victims the way their loved ones asked for them to be remembered, and went on to design data displays for the New York Times, including the tracking of social media posts of its stories. He created his own school to show others the way to use all their creative juices in the pursuit of displaying data. Among other things, data can be art. This is a whole ‘nother universe from the discussions of data we are accustomed to.

If that weren’t enough, he is a passionate liberal Canadian who appreciates the environmental issues, the human issues, and the social issues. It is all on display in the ever-mutating Living in Data, his first book.

Not knowing what to expect, I was locked in by the first few pages, which jumped from mood-setting story to story like an avant garde film. Thorp draws you in with ever-changing scenery, then abandons it all for another scene somewhere else in the world. He also likes to break the fourth wall, by suddenly addressing the reader directly:

“I promise that you’ll only read the phrase ‘big data’ once in this chapter, and it’s already over.”

Despite the fact big data is a term and not a phrase, this is a delightful departure from the expected. It appears in a paragraph describing why data became a collective noun — now known as mass nouns for some reason. Both singular and plural…

Related posts:

I was never much of a Sound of Music fan, but I always loved These Are a Few of My Favorite Things. The idea of listing what you love: what could be better? All tucked away safe, in one place…