Do You think, the Hippocratic Oath is to be Introduced to Data Scientists/Analysts similar to Medical Professionals?

 Dear Friends and Students

Recently I was invited for a Guest Talk at an event conducted by BTech CSE Data Science. It is an interesting and challenging task to address these students as the course just began a few years back in India. As part of the talk, I was told not to touch the technology and tools! Story building becomes much more complex. I have to resort to Kevin Bartley’s (rivery.io) data points to build my story. Data analysis is a historic activity in different forms.

The importance of presenting the right data is highly critical for human mankind. We are all surrounded by Data but starved for Insights! If a Data scientist or Data analyst makes a mistake, it causes damage to the entire history. Our history proved this truth.

In 97 AD, Chinese military ambassador Gan Ying was sent to travel to the Roman Empire. But Gan Ying never reached Rome. He traveled up to Iran and asked local merchants how long it would take to cross the Black Sea to Rome. The local merchants wanted to preserve their monopolies; they told the trip could take up to 2 years! Thinking it would be too long a wait, Ying turned back, and China never connected with the Roman Empire. Now you understand how much damage data misleading causes!

Similarly, in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to find an alternative route to Asia. However, Columbus relied on the inferior calculation of Alfranagus, a Persian geographer, to chart his route. It is also believed that Columbus either forgot or did not realize that he had to convert the Arabic miles used by Alfranagus into Roman miles. This bad data caused Columbus and his crew to land in the Americas, rather than in Asia.

During World War II, the Germans created the first long-range guided ballistic missile, known as the V-2. However, a little misinformation by some agents resulted in a recalibration of the missile range, eventually, the missile did not reach the target.

As one of the worst financial crises in history, the 2008 crash was fuelled by the overstated figures of mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and other derivatives. Eventually, all derivatives defaulted resulting in huge job losses and market collapse!

Dear Friends,

Data is the new oil and the new gold! The total amount of data created, captured, copied, and consumed globally is forecast to increase rapidly, reaching 64.2 zettabytes (a trillion gigabytes.) in 2020. By 2025, it is projected to be 180 zettabytes. when AI systems are trained using this data and advising the whole world, what kind of role does a Data Analyst has to play?

Do you agree now Data Scientist/Analyst has to take the Hippocratic Oath not to share misinformation or misguide or overstate or create bad data?

Ravi Saripalle