Talking Points at Association for Institutional Researchers + Planning Officers

The items I discussed in a keynote earlier this month

Earlier this month I delivered the annual keynote address for New York state’s Association for Institutional Researchers & Planning Officers (AIRPO). The conference theme was “Institutional Research Meets Data Science.” Here are a selection of the main points I discussed there.

Three Questions About Being a Data Scientist

The first point I discussed revolved around these three questions.

• Who can be a data scientist?
• Who decides who can be a data scientist?
• And, why?

And related, I connected these rhetorical questions to Ada Lovelace (because I always talk about Ada). Many consider her to be the world’s first computer programmer. However, I consider her to be the world’s first data scientist.

Image Credit: Author’s Illstration made in Canva. Portrait Adapted from Canavan & Stoney (2020).

Given that Ada wrote about how the computer could analyze for, analyze, and then essentially extrapolate from mathematical patterns in music — all with the aim to produce new music — I argue she was writing about generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI).