Doctor Strange: scenario prediction and data inference

In the continuation of our series of Data Science posts: Infinite War, let’s predict scenarios with Doctor Strange.

*Doctor Strange image: Marvel/Disney

The Supreme Wizard manages to create all those miraculous portals, back and forth in time and… predicts scenarios. The most shocking scene of the hero, who owns the Time Stone, was in the movie Avengers: Infinity War.

On another planet, Stephen Vincent Strange foresees more than 14 million alternate realities to figure out how to beat Thanos and not hand over the Infinity Stone to the super villain. And his answer was: only one.

In this sense, we can clearly relate Strange Doctor with Data Inference.

The concept of Data Science is closely linked to the research of hero scenarios. This is a power that companies can use off the big screen and the comics: collecting a large amount of data in samples to carry out the process of statistical inference and discover possibilities of a certain scenario.

Here, there is no distortion of reality. Let’s use the Time Stone and return a little before traveling with Strange through the mystical portals to other realms. Read closely!

The Road to Being a Supreme Wizard – or Mastering Data Inference

In Doctor Strange’s film, we followed his trajectory from when he was Dr. Stephen Vincent Strange until he became the Supreme Wizard.

Stephen Strange was a successful doctor → He suffers a serious car accident, which damages his career → His quest begins to solve the problem → He finds the temple in Nepal → Learn the mystical arts of the Ancients → Becomes a Supreme Wizard

Do you remember all the obstacles he had to face in order to get to the solution of his problem? In addition, the solution was in something he could never imagine, and remember the guy is a doctor.

The acclaimed (and superb) neurosurgeon did not recover the movement of the hands and started to operate again.

He became a superhero capable of manipulating time and saving the Earth from destruction.

We realize that he went through the following steps:

Problem → Looking for the solution → Solution found → Learning → Problem solved

Now we will take the trajectory to the corporate scenario.

How many times have we seen companies with different profiles – from startups to big traditional companies – go through exactly these steps?

And go bankrupt because they could not find the right solution to the problem? Maybe the solution was found, but it was in a completely different format than expected – as what happened to our hero.

That’s where Data Science comes in. The set of methods and processes – which covers data inference – is applied to a problem in order to find the solution and solve it.

To do this, gathering as much data as possible and making affirmations from samples is a good tactic to predict scenarios and make strategic, well-founded decisions within companies.

In that sense, you may be wondering…

Would Doctor Strange be a data scientist?

If one day he gets tired of defending the world, we can say that he has the expertise to do so. To be a data scientist, among other skills, it is necessary to know how to create statistical models and use them for statistical inference and hypothesis testing.

Data inference allows the data scientist to find and examine the data to find patterns and make propositions for the purpose of obtaining information.

Remember the scene we mentioned before? Over 14 million alternate realities to figure out how to beat Thanos and he claimed that this would be possible in just one. He ran a series of data sets to find meaningful correlations between them.

How can data inference help corporations?

Sounds like a movie thing, but it’s not. What Doctor Strange does to save the world from Thanos, in fact, is not only a reality within various industries, as it saves many companies from bankruptcy.

Soon, we can say that you could get to work and find Doctor Strange predicting scenarios. Through his analyses, he would enable the corporation to make better decisions and evaluate existing models.

Often, a theory needs to be refuted to arrive at better strategies (remember when we talk about other solutions that were not foreseen?).

You can be the Doctor Strange of your company!

You do not need a perfect Doctor Strange and everything within your company to use Data Science inference data, people would find it odd. Neither does he need Thanos to be close to snapping his fingers to look for survival solutions.

Just a change of mindset – which, yes, is more difficult than snapping your fingers.

Bringing Data Science into corporations puts a super-power in the hands of Stakeholders: business decisions (well) based on data. Using all the potential that data can deliver adds value to companies that see value in technology and innovation.

For this, Data Science needs to be on the agenda of your organization.

It is important to remember that investing in it requires specific knowledge, sophisticated tools and extremely skilled professionals. The best way is to seek help from consultancies and specialized agencies.

MJV can help you with this! We have expertise in Data Science, Open Innovation and Digital Transformation projects to bring change of mindset into your business. Contact us and be the Doctor Strange of your corporation!

In the next chapter in the series “Data Science: The Infinite War”: FRIDAY comes on the scene!

Jarvis’s replacement – the artificial intelligence created by Tony Stark that eventually gave birth to Ultron – is a true digital heroine. It may seem like only a coadjuvant, just an Iron Man Help Desk, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. is much more than that. And so there will be a blog post just for her!

F.R.I.D.A.Y. is responsible for saving Tony Stark at various times. It is she who points the best way out when the hero is in the dead ends where he usually gets to. But how does she do it? Simple: data analysis.

The superpower of FRIDAY is to automate data analysis to provide practical solutions for Stark.

But if this is a key process in Data Science, would you be able to tell me who the real heroine is in this story?

While the suspense is in the air, how about taking a look at what has already happened around here? Follow the Data Science saga: Infinite War and be a hero in your company!