I teach data science courses thoughout the US. I enjoying asking attendees why they are in class. I get many good answers, but occassionally I get some funny answers. Here is a story with one of the more humorous answers.

While chatting with an attendee before class, I asked why he chose to attend this class. Here was his answer.

Well, my boss attended a conference and heard a talk on Big Data. Then, he came back to the office and bought hadoop for some of our systems. Next he heard about this training and told me to attend. When preparing to leave, the boss said, “Get me sum ‘dat big data”.

After a slight chuckle from both of us, I mentioned we would talk more about that in class.

While this story is somewhat humorous, it is not all that uncommon. Companies want to start using data science, they often just do not know where to start. If you are looking for a starting point, check out this post, You Want Data Science, Now What?.

Do you have a funny “data science” or “big data” story? If so, please share in the comments.