What Was Your Data Beginning?

Do you remember your ‘ah ha’ moment that turned you into a data junkie?  The moment that made you believe in the power of data?  I remember mine clearly. 

In the early 1990’s I worked for a small naval architecture firm.  Their focus was primarily custom high-end racing sailboat designs, including boats for the America’s Cup.  One day my boss brought in a floppy disk and asked me to ‘take a look.’  Apparently, we had a client who thought his brand-new boat was slow.  The disk contained the data dump from the boat’s instruments.  There were fields like time of day, heading, wind velocity, and boat speed.  I was able to parse the data and essentially recreate the races with the available data points.  What I learned was the boat tacked (or turned, for those of you unfamiliar with sailing terminology) nine or ten times on the first leg of each race.  I know not all of you out there are expert sailboat racers but take my word for it that tacking that many times on any leg in a big boat is slow. 

What did that mean for my boss?  He was able to have a different conversation with our client.  We were no longer defending boat design or building materials; instead the conversation shifted to talking about racing tactics and what kinds of improvements could be made there first.  He couldn’t have had that conversation without the data to back him up.  I was hooked. 

That’s my story, what’s yours?