Focus on learning and teaching soft data skills and not just hard data skills

  • data-literacy
  • idea
  • winter
  • The focus of data people is often to improve their or other people's knowledge of technical tools.
  • It's perhaps because it's more tangible and easier to grasp. You go through a course and feel like you achieved something, expanded your knowledge. However, if you spend time on improving your critical or analytical thinking, it doesn't feel like you really learnt something particularly new.
  • That's why a lot of communities and courses resolve to only cover working on hard skills and technicalities rather than trying to convey a complex message of critical thinking, asking the right questions, psychological aspects, etc.
  • This goes even deeper to our educational system that also rewards learning particular tools and pockets of knowledge rather than nailing down the fundamentals and interconnecting seemingly distant and distinct topics.
Metadata