 Seward Johnson created this famous sculpture, Double Check. It was an homage to the hurried and often impromptu necessity of an uncharacteristic work environment. Regarded as a talisman for the New York worker, the statue sat in Liberty Plaza Park for over 20 years. Following 9/11 Double Check remains.The beauty of stillness amid the chaos still haunts me. Seward Johnson once again captured the passage in time by re-installing our quiet observer into the now renamed Zuccotti Park. He sits on the same granite bench as well worn testament to the day. I discovered this installation below in the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton New Jersey--nearby Princeton University. The grey smokey hues are reminiscent of the day things changed but somehow remain. Somewhere between order and chaos is the narrative we seek.  Listening to Amalio Telenti, International Man of (Genetic) Mystery on Tech Tonics podcast, the "aha" moment wasn't what or where I expected. Amalio described an antipodean dilemma common to most of my data analysis colleagues. Although carefully selected and validated data models are revered--often the signals are buried in a bit of noise. Referencing neatly labeled lab equipment and sterile environments of research juxtaposed with the more familiar (at least for me) stacked empty pizza boxes and clutter of innovation, he artfully presents an argument for visiting both worlds. You need a "nascent freedom for innovation and strict Cartesian for production". Crappy data and rigid innovation or vice versa doesn't work--you need rigidity but in the right places. I tend to be a fan of processes and principles in data collection but with variable degrees depending on what stage of data collection I am engaged with at the moment. For example, hypothesis generation can withstand a more fluid approach to discovery but transitioning to hypothesis confirmation needs a bit of sterility or as Amalio eludes--don't contaminate execution with crazy innovators.
Read more over at Medium, Either you run the data, or the data runs you... My philosophy is if you are going to write about something, go deep. A big part of ultra-running along the beautiful coast is listening to podcasts. Attributing these long adventures to R&D, I set up a queue (listed at the end of post) and let ‘er rip. I plucked the title above from a quote by Jim Rohn, “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” Many stakeholders in healthcare or pharmaceuticals rope off an area of interest and never think about what happens outside their kleptocracy. Comments are closed.
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