Data Science: Postpone the Reward

In general terms, humans are moved through life towards a motivation; it could be a specific goal, or a particular personal, professional or academic reason.

In the majority of cases, people push their limits in order to achieve something, to solve a problem or to find a solution to a certain situation. At the end of the day, almost everybody fights to obtain a reward as fast as possible.

Every day we face small or large challenges that test our capacity to endure and succeed. In the road of life, that is a key ingredient that is almost inevitable. Precisely, in my opinion, that makes it an interesting adventure that converts it into something not boring.

Now, usually people do not obtain such a reward in a quick and easy way; they have to keep pushing and working untiringly for a while to get what they want. Sometimes, when such a time range is longer than expected without an accomplishment or a particular result, people, unfortunately, surrender.

The Spanish psychiatrist Marian Rojas Estapé, one of my favorite authors, in one of her famous lectures, mentioned that people need to train themselves to wait for a reward after a long way of sacrifice and effort. She points out the necessity of building and strengthening a non-surrender culture, as well as increasing the capacity to be patient in time.

Precisely, the criteria of Dr Rojas Estapé could be applied to the data science field. Almost in 100% of cases, we do not execute successfully a code or a model in R at the very first attempt, more less achieve what we are looking for from the beginning. We need to try several times, fail, fail again and fail so many times to obtain a reward. In addition, there are a lot of unexpected obstacles, problems and delays that appear and we do not have any other chance but to face them. Yes indeed, the sensation of looking a code or model working properly after several hours of failing, does not have comparison.

Thus, in my particular case, it´s worth it without any doubt! I invite you not to surrender with your model in R. As much as you push and try, the more probability of success you might have. Keep trying… wait a bit more…be patient… you are close… the reward will be absolutely satisfactory.

See below for other Data Science articles from Roberto Delgado Castro:

• R-Statix: The Power of Correlations in R
• Absolute and Relative Time: The Impact of Data Science
• Rudder Casting: Defining the Heart of a Data Warehouse
• R Quarto^©: New Boundary In Financial Reporting Services
• Pivot Tables in R For Financial Analysis of Public Trusts in Costa Rica