In part one of this blog post we discussed the traits of people you should try to build in a data science team.  Of course technical, statistical, programming and mathematical skills are needed.  However, it takes much more.  We discussed the following traits:  The Pioneer, The Cattle Herder, The Muscle, and The Story Teller.  See below for that blog post:

 …

I was deep into a presentation at a major retailer. In the darkened room, a lone hand shot up. “John, we spend 80% of our time on data load and prep. Only 20% is used to produce analytics. We don’t like that ratio.”

The speaker was right. About 80% of the analytics process is spent on data preparation and loading. Numerous examples come to mind. I remember a project for an auto insurance company using telematics and driver behavior. The one-off code to prepare the data took three days…