[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
Data science didn't really
exist when I was growing up.
It's not something that I ever woke up and
said, I want to be a data
scientist when I grow up.
No, it didn't exist.
I didn't know I would be
working in data science.
>> When I grew up, there isn't
that field called data science.
And I think it's really new.
>> Data science didn't exist until 2009,
2011.
Someone like DJ Patil or
Andrew Gelman coined the term.
Before that, there was statistics.
And I didn't want to be any of those.
I wanted to be in business.
And then I found data science
a heck of a lot more interesting.
>> I studied statistics,
that's how I started.
I went through many different stages in
my life where I wanted to be a singer and
then a doctor.
And then I realized that
I was good at math.
So I chose an area that was
focused on quantitative analysis.
And from then I do think that
I wanted to work with data.
Not necessarily data science
as it's known today.
>> The first time that I had
contact with data science,
when I was my first year as
a mechanical engineering.
And strategic consulting firms,
they use data science to make decisions.
So it was my first contact
with data science.
>> I had a complicated problem
that I needed to solve, and
the usual techniques that we had at
the time couldn't help with that problem.
>> I graduated with a math degree
in the worst possible time,
right after the economic crisis, and you
actually had to be useful to get a job.
So I went and got a degree in statistics.
And then I worked enough jobs that
were called data scientist that
I suddenly became one.
>> My undergraduate degree was in
business, and I majored in politics,
philosophy, and economics.
And then I did a master's
in business analytics at
New York University at
the Stern School of Business.
When I left my undergrad,
the first company I joined, it turned out
that they were analyzing electronic point
of sale data for retail manufacturers.
And what we were doing was data science.
But we only really started
using that term much later.
In fact, I'd say four or five years ago is
when we started calling it analytics and
data science.
>> I had several options for
my internship here in Canada.
And one of the options was
to work with data science.
I used to work with project development.
But I think that was a good choice.
And then I start my
internship with data science.
>> I'm a civil engineer by training,
so all engineers work with data.
I would say the conventional use of data
science in my life started
with transportation research.
I started building large models trying
to forecast traffic on streets, trying
to determine congestion and greenhouse
gas emissions or tailpipe emissions.
So I think that's where my start was.
And I started building these models
when I was a graduate student at
the University of Toronto.
Started working with very large data sets,
looking at household samples of,
say, 150,000 households
from half a million trips.
And that, too,
I'm speaking from mid 90s when this was
supposed to be a very large data set,
but not in today's terms.
But that's how I started.
I continued working with it.
And then I moved to McGill University
where I was a professor of transportation
engineering.
And I built even bigger data models
that involved data and analytics.
And so I would say, yes, transportation
research brought me to data science.
[MUSIC]
