Speaker 1: Transcriber's Name Reviewer's Name David DeRuwe I'll never forget the first time I thought about data science. I was sitting on a horse in the pouring down rain, lost in the Costa Rican jungle. As a teenager, I had dropped out of high school to start a software company in Latin America. And while the software was an adventure, my real passion was leading medical and dental relief teams into the remote jungles, deserts, and mountains of the developing world. Somewhere along the way, the non-profit that I started had acquired a few hundred acres of land in the northern Sierra Pequi rainforest. And on this particular evening, we were expecting a group of doctors and dentists to arrive by boat to a series of clinics that we would do up and down the river over the next couple of days. Now, where I lived, I slept in a hammock under a thatch hut, and we didn't have modern luxuries like running water or electricity, but we did have this propane stove. And so on this particular evening, we were cooking up dinner for this group coming in, and we ran out of propane at the worst possible time. So I mounted up my horse and balanced this giant tank of propane on the horse and set off into the jungle. A couple hours away, there was an outpost where I could swap this out for a new canister of propane. Now, the trip was always interesting because this time of the year, it was the rainy season, and so it was pouring down rain, and the mud was so thick that sometimes we would get horses stuck in the mud, and you'd have to get another horse to come pull it out. So I got to this outpost, I traded this tank of gas, and I set around for my return journey home. And about this time, it was getting dark. It was still raining, and there was a lightning storm, so for some time, I could actually see where I was going because of the frequency of the lightning. I'll never forget. I saw lightning strike this tree on a hill a few hundred yards away, and it scared me. And I looked down, and I'm holding this giant canister of metal. And my first thought is, oh, no, I'm going to get electrocuted because I'm not wearing gloves. And then I thought, no, if lightning strikes this tank of gas, electrocution is the least of my worries. But as I continued going, the lightning stopped. And this was a problem because it got so dark, with the cloud cover and the jungle canopy, I couldn't see anything. And so I thought, what do I do here? So I thought, well, I could just sit in the mud and wait for the sun to come up. But we had had a jaguar in the area killing local livestock, so I ruled that option out. And it seems like just when all hope was lost, I remembered what a Costa Rican friend of mine had told me years earlier. He said, Josh, these horses know the trail so well, you really don't even have to guide them. So I did the only thing I knew to do. I let go of the reins, and I let the horse lead the way. After what seemed like an eternity, I saw a candlelight in the distance, and I knew we had made it back safely. And you know what I realized that evening, and the days that followed, is that we humans are a lot like those horses. We follow paths and patterns in our lives each and every day. It could be simple things like brushing your teeth in the morning, or your commute to work. And one of the areas where I've seen this most prevalent is actually the opposite of that, and that's what happens during culture shock. So living and working overseas, we would host workers for long periods of time, and culture shock is this thing that sets in after you've been overseas for a couple of weeks. The honeymoon period ends, and you start dealing with things like stress and depression, and even physical headaches. A lot of people think, well, the culture shock is because of the culture, or the food, or the people. And while those are contributing factors, psychologists have found one of the major drivers is the loss of those patterns and routines that we use throughout our day. They're things that our mind allows us to put in cruise control so we can focus on more important events that are occurring. To give you an example of what this looks like, work through a mental exercise with me. Imagine for a moment that right now you realize that you need to get milk on the way home. So think for a moment about the store that you would go to today if you were to purchase milk. Now close your eyes. Now seriously, if you close your eyes, it really helps this visualization. So close your eyes for a minute, and picture that store that you've selected, and walk through the aisles in your mind and look for that carton of milk. As you visualize it in your mind, you'll see the aisles, maybe the produce section that you go past. Chances are you can see the milk on the shelf in the refrigerator, the color of the carton, and everything around you. And most likely, if this is like most days, you're actually texting on your phone while you're doing all of this. Now open your eyes, and travel with me to this Japanese grocery store. If we fast forward for just a moment past the language and the characters, we still have to decide, do I want 4%? 2%? Soy milk? Almond milk? How do they get the milk from the almonds? And no matter what you choose, the whole way home you're just thinking, man, I hope I didn't end up with buttermilk. These patterns and routines that we go through throughout our day are a major focus in data science. But actually, the study of this is something that goes back hundreds of years. One of my heroes in this is a surgeon by the name of Dr. Joseph Bell. Dr. Bell was a surgeon in the Royal Infirmary of Scotland in the mid-1800s. And he was so attuned to these minute details, paths, and patterns in our everyday lives, that people would shake hands with him, and he could tell them what they did for a living and where they were from. He would look at the calluses in their skin and tell them whether they held a hammer or a fountain pen for a living. It was said that his collection of tobacco leaves and perfumes from around the world meant that he could often walk into a room after someone had been there and tell you who was there just judging by the smell. And so the thing that was so fascinating about Dr. Bell is that before long, he was so famous for this that police began to actually contact him and ask for advice on cases. So he's considered by many to be the father of modern-day forensic science. His clerk was so fascinated by these stories that he began to write short stories about Dr. Bell and instead called him a fictional detective by the name of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes was famous for looking for clues and data points in the everyday life around him and creating insights around context, where someone was from, where they had been, and where they were going. But if you think about the world of the modern data detective or data scientist, more data has been created in the last two years than the rest of the history of the world combined. And the amount of data in existence is actually doubling every year. Now, one of the reasons for this is the cost of computing power from processors to storage is dropping by half about every 18 months, and it's doubling in speech and storage capacity at the same time. Sensors are becoming ubiquitous, things like thermometers or hygrometers or the accelerometer. The accelerometer is that device in your phone that measures the tilt or rotation. A couple of years ago, an accelerometer was about $25 in the size of a human thumb. Today, you can get those for a couple of pennies, and they're about a millimeter square. Just last week, IBM announced a new tiny computer that's about the same speed as a computer we would have used in the 90s, but it's about the size of a grain of rock salt. That one on the left is actually 64 of them bundled together. The cost for IBM to make these is somewhere around 10 cents. So with the ubiquity of these sensors in every part of our life, we're seeing products surface like the Nest thermostat. It's a simple concept. Monitor those patterns and routines that we follow, capture that data, write a formula, predict when it's going to happen in the future, and create some convenience for the consumer. Similar product, the IntelliSea water sensor. You hook it up to your water main in your home. It monitors your daily usage of water. If it sees anything out of the ordinary, it sends you a text message, or it can shut off your water automatically if it thinks there's a leak. But the ability to use these data from these patterns and routines is not just impacting product companies. It's touching every industry out there. A couple of years ago, Harvard Business Review did a study of companies that use data science in a meaningful way, and they found with over 300 companies, the companies that use data science were seeing about a 6% profitability boost. This was six years ago. And it's impacting every industry from retail to manufacturing to banking. If you remember these loyalty rewards cards, and maybe some of you still have them, the idea is pretty simple. Buy nine cups of coffee and get one free. It's a simple transaction to increase loyalty. But today, with smartphones and mobile apps and mobile digital loyalty rewards programs, we can track customer purchase patterns and behavior across digital channels in thousands of stores. So if we look at those patterns and those behaviors and we begin to look for insights, we can do things like create taste profiles, identify for a restaurant who our salty and sweet eaters are or our indulgent fans. Maybe we want to identify where's the best location to open a new branch or retail store. We can look at the purchase patterns and behaviors of our best customers. We can then look at external data and find where are those best locations. Or perhaps we want to identify our customers we're at risk of losing before it's too late. We can look at the patterns and behaviors of customers we've lost in the past, and we can apply that same formula to our existing customer base. And now we can let our sales or customer support team know so they can reach out before it's too late. Now what amazes me with all of the modern data and technology available, currently most experts agree that only about 5% of data right now is being used in any meaningful way. Consider for a moment your sphere of influence, whether that's patients or patrons, students or customers. They may not be lost in the Costa Rican jungle, but they each follow paths and patterns every day. If you were to use any one of the major technologies that's available at our fingerprints today to look for these patterns, imagine the clues that you could find and imagine the insights that you could create. Thank you. applause