Seeing Data Science as Divination
Seeing Data Science as Divination
Why divination is actually closely related to Data Science
Why divination is actually closely related to Data Science
Since I was young, I actually really interested in the literature of culture and mythology. One part of the study that interests me is the art of divination. For that reason and in the time of confinement right now, I decided to take part in an online course provided by Harvard regarding divination and their system here.
From what I learned, every culture has its own way to predict what would happen in the future and how it could be true by the data the diviner collected. Yes, divination is actually closely related to the data, and the data science itself. In this article, I would try to explain in a concise and intuitive way of how divination could be associated with data science.
This article is just pure opinionated and for knowledge purposes. In no other means to degraded any long-standing practice that have been existed before.
Divination Predictive System
According to Wikipedia, Divination an attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual. In a simpler term, it means knowing the future via the ritual process.
Divination itself could be classified into four broader categories depend on their input, including:
Random; Where inputs came from the random processes, sometimes also called “spontaneous.” For example, the Roman Bird Augury where we need to wait for the birds to act spontaneously before making a prediction.
Randomized; Where inputs are Human-initiated to produce a random outcome. For example, Rolling a dice.
Human; Where inputs that come directly from the diviner or input that cannot be interpreted by anyone other than the diviner; For example, possessed person.
Non-Random; Where inputs come from observations of any consistent, repeatable, predictable, and knowable process; For example, Measuring the position of the planets.
Somewhat the term used above is rather familiar in the Data Science field. There is an input and depend on what inputs we had; the ritual type would be also different to produce the prediction.
This ritual could be imagined as a prediction system or “algorithm” for making a prediction. In this “algorithm” we could say that if we input “A” to the “algorithm”, predict “B”; for example, if Jupiter in position 273.87 degrees, predict the future romance life. Thou, just like any prediction model in Data Science; The “algorithm” is not that simple.
What is interesting in the divination system, the system itself is sometimes a bit unknown to the people outside; because there is a mysticism involved or the system itself is too complex or even because it lost in the history. In Data Science predictive model, just imagine this as a Deep Learning model. It involves many statistical methods, the system is really complex, and after training, we don’t know what happens inside because of their stochastic nature. We just have the Deep Learning model, we input the observed data, and the prediction comes out. Divine!
Above is just a little bit forced example that Divination is similar to the predictive model. It could feel more natural if we use an example of the system prediction step-by-step.
Divination Framework
1. Observation
The first step in any divination or in the data science field would be always the observation of the data. This is an input we fed into the “algorithm” to produce a prediction. Just like when we fed data into our machine learning model. In a theory, the more observation we have, the stronger the prediction would be.
2. Prediction
After observing the data, we have the prediction. The clarity of the prediction thou is varied depending on the system. While few predictions are rigid, like the position of the planets; many prediction systems incorporate ambiguity, intentional or otherwise, different interpretations.
In data science, take an example of the cluster analysis in unsupervised learning; we would end up with cluster results that the system predicts they should be clustered together. How we interpret the result thou would be up to us as Data Scientist.
3. Evaluating Accuracy and Make Changes
Was the prediction correct? Just like in any data science process, it is a simple question but actually it is a much more complex problem to evaluate it. It seems strange that divination needs to evaluate their prediction accuracy but it is happening although not always the case. In fact, many of the divination systems itself could be evolving to have better accuracy but most of the time we would not know about it as history is lost in time.
Take, for example, the Haruspicy from ancient Mesopotamian time. Haruspicy is the ritual where they sacrifice a sheep and extract the liver to gain a prediction. Since it is unlikely that the prediction ever yields 100% positive or negative results, a diviner might perform another ritual to reduce uncertainty. In this case, the diviner acts like a modern scientist by performing an additional experiment to acquire data.
Based on the accuracy of the method, some changes in the system could be made. Just like we data scientists playing with the hyperparameter, some changes in the system would be bound to happen. Although, as I mentioned before; most of the time we would not know what is changed in the prediction system because it lost in the time.
Importance of divination in respect to Data Science
I have explained to you in the passage above that divination and data science is in some respect are similar. In fact, many of the divination is based on the data. Tarot cards, astrology, roman bird augury, etc. they are all based on the data and pattern that happens.
Divination is seemed unscientific but it is a human need. Divination tells us about what will happen in the future or it will interpret what happened in the past and then the present. What happens today is different from what it was yesterday and it will be different from what it will be tomorrow and hence, the importance of the diviner in helping you understand the nature of the community, the nature of the society, the events that are taking place, and of course, how to sort of deal with those events.
In modern times, we would, of course, eliminate any opinion raised from this unscientific method. Prediction based on the dice or sheep liver would be considered bogus and not taken seriously. For that reason, we as humans need more reason to believe that our prediction has a ground truth. Here we develop many scientific reasons just for the purposes to assure that what would happen are predictable in some senses. Data Scientist is just one of the roles that happen to do that. We try analysis and create a model based on the data to predict what would happen based on the inputs. Just like divination.
It is different than diviner that we consult for our personal daily life, but the need for Data scientists coming from the human curiosity that stems from long ago to know about what happens in the future. Thus, what we do as a data scientist is not far from diviner.
Conclusion
This article is just purely my opinion and how I see the divination with respect to what I do as a Data Scientist. Our curiosity to know the pattern and what happens in the future as a human never changes; just the way how we try to have that knowledge is different.