HACKER Q&A
📣 chirau

Did Chamath Palihapitiya coin/invent the 'data scientist' job role?


In his podcast session with Lex Fridman, Chamath mentions how he coined the term data scientist for a new recruit at Facebook and how that started the whole data scientist role/field.

I was just curious how accurate this is. Was this the first instance of the term? I found it quite interesting

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFQUDCgMjRc&t=2255s


  👤 chirau Accepted Answer ✓
Here is a link to the conversation at the point he talks about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFQUDCgMjRc&t=2255s

👤 genezeta
From [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science ]:

> Early usage

> In 1962, John Tukey described a field he called "data analysis", which resembles modern data science. In 1985, in a lecture given to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, C. F. Jeff Wu used the term "data science" for the first time as an alternative name for statistics. ...

> The term "data science" has been traced back to 1974, when Peter Naur proposed it as an alternative name for computer science. ...

> Modern usage

> In 2012, technologists Thomas H. Davenport and DJ Patil declared "Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century", a catch-phrase that was picked up even by major-city newspapers like the New York Times and the Boston Globe. ...

> The modern conception of data science as an independent discipline is sometimes attributed to William S. Cleveland. In a 2001 paper ...

> The professional title of "data scientist" has been attributed to DJ Patil and Jeff Hammerbacher in 2008. ...

> There is still no consensus on the definition of data science, and it is considered by some to be a buzzword. ...

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You can also read [ https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2013/05/28/a-very-shor... ] which mentions quite a few previous references to the term.

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But of course any random "Entrepreneur - Businessman - Venture capitalist" can claim to have invented anything and if he repeats it a number of times, he can end up building a strong enough perception of it being true.