Eccentric Analytics
Somewhere after Albert Einstein and Leopold Stokowski but before Rick Sanchez and Dr. Nefario is the eccentric character of one Emmett Lathrop “Doc” Brown, Ph.D. The man who singlehandedly rediscovered the DeLorean while warping the fabric of time — with lots of help from a bunch of other equally eclectic (and potentially eccentric) people.
While Doc and time travel (to the best of our knowledge) is fully fictional, his character is fully emblematic of various processes in analytics and science that receive about as much love as the DeLorean before Back to the Future. You may note that Doc spent very little time on a computer of any sort, never mentioned big data (not once), and tended to gloss over most statistical/probability references through out the trilogy.
Doc is a Hybrid
Most analysts are not one thing, Doc is no exception. His character was conceived as a hybrid and portrayed even more so. He was loosely inspired by both Albert Einstein and Leopold Stokowski. Einstein, relatively speaking, is a pretty straight forward take — great scientist, discoverer of relativity, and iconic by all accounts. Stokowski is a bit more surprising. For those not up on recent composers, Stokowski is famous for his work with the Philadelphia Orchestra, appearing in Fantasia, or marrying Gloria Vanderbuilt (your choice).
Doc has inspired characters of his own. From Rick Sanchez of Rick & Morty to Dr Nefario of Despicable Me. These inspiration are loose as well. It is a bit of an inheritance tree, perhaps object-oriented, lineage, six degrees of Kevin Bacon, or some other somewhat popular concept vastly underappreciated in the world of business and behavioral analytics.
Marty McFly: Wait a minute, Doc. Ah… Are you telling me that you built a time machine… out of a DeLorean?
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Dr. Emmett Brown: The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?
Besides, the stainless steel construction made the flux disperal… Watch out!
Style, Flair, Eccentricity, or simply Utilitarian
Doc is constantly re-purposing everything. He is a bit of a scientific MacGyver. From his Rube Goldberg inspired alarm clock / breakfast maker to his conversion to the Mr Fusion, Doc may be a tinker at heart but he does NOT suffer from Not Invented Here. He calls it style but it is truly amazing resource management.
More impressive still, Doc (like Einstein) loves to combine. DeLorean meets time travel, fusion meets lightning, even alarm clock meets breakfast is a strong example. He makes associations that others don’t. Odd, that sounds a lot like the last point… Across time, across lineage, across function — Doc Brown is an analyst more concern with synthesis than analysis (at least at the point the movies begin).
While Back To The Future indelibly carved the DeLorean back into popular memory, it was not able to do the same for associative analytics. Perhaps it was the lack of a well accepted branding? Perhaps it was that it was his process and not a product (a running challenge for anyone in the service industry)?
True Analysts recognize the symbolic genius of Emmett “Doc” Brown. Many today were originally inspired by his stories… causality? association? inheritance? Eclectic, eccentric, it really doesn’t matter — you just need to appreciate his ‘style’. Thanks for reading!
