To be a data person is to be a tragic and lonely creature riding the roller coaster that comes along with trying to answer a question with error laden data that doesn’t measure what you think it does. So, we came up with a play list that mirrors your typical day (and yes, it’s on Spotify):
8:00 “I Can See Clearly Now”, Johnny Nash. Every day begins with boundless optimism and the hope for a bright sunshiny day.
8:30 “Time is On My Side”, The Rolling Stones: Because you’ve got all day to beat this dataset into submission.
9:30 “Takin’ Care of Business”, Bachman-Turner Overdrive: It might be 9:30 already and the client is already calling because you promised it today, but you are still deluding yourself by thinking you are being productive.
10:30 “Time”, Pink Floyd: Having frittered away the most productive hours of the day with idle chit-chat with colleagues, you realize that ‘no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun’
10:45 “Lyin’ Eyes”, The Eagles: Data lies, we all know it.
11:00 “Roll With It”, Steve Winwood: Catching the data lying to you for the first time, but you are still optimistic.
11:30 “I’ve Been Everywhere”, Johnny Cash: We need some field work, something is missing here.
12:00 “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, U2: Nope, that didn’t help. I hate my life.
12:30 “If You’re Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows)”, Rodney Atkins: Just keep moving, seriously.
1:00 “Back on the Chain Gang”, The Pretenders: You scarfed down that sandwich on your 6 minute lunch break, and are now back at it.
1:30 “What a Fool Believes”, The Doobie Brothers: Unbridled optimism once again befalls you, and you hurriedly put in place a model.
2:00 “Gimme Three Steps”, Lynyrd Skynyrd: Stupidly, you present it to the client – way ahead of schedule – find me the exit door now.
2:30 “Sunny and 75”, Joe Nicholls: The beginning of the critical phase of the day, and you are daydreaming about escaping to the beach with your sweetheart.
2:40 “Knee Deep”, Zac Brown Band and Jimmy Buffet: Realizing you need to ‘change your geography’ and ‘maybe you will see’, you head to Starbucks to siphon off their bandwidth.
2:50 “Take This Job and Shove It”, Johnny Paycheck: Changing your geography didn’t help. Maybe its time to accept your inevitable defeat and take up another profession.
3:00 “Hard To Say I’m Sorry”, Chicago: Buck up buttercup, time to face the client.
3:10 “Wasted Time”, The Eagles: (Yes, that’s two now, but we like them). Mixed feelings at this point. Having eaten your big slice of humble pie, ‘you’re afraid its all been wasted time’.
3:30 “Land of Confusion”, Genesis: Dang, I need help. ‘Oh Superman where are you now, when everything’s gone wrong somehow’
4:00 “Under Pressure”, David Bowie. No comment required.
4:30 “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, The Rolling Stones: (yes, our age is beginning to show here…) It finally dawns on you. You don’t have the exact data you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need. You find some plausible surrogates for the data you lack and move on.
5:15 “I Won’t Back Down”, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: With renewed energy and optimism, you drag the data down to the basement, put it on the rack, and have your way with it until it finally confesses.
7:30 “Don’t Stop Believing”, Journey: 1) Because every playlist ever made includes this song, 2) because it is a great song, and 3) because we have dispatched the data to the client before the end of business (in Hawaii, but let’s not be picky).
Of course, overnight, the client reviews the model and doesn’t like it because it doesn’t sync with their view of how the world works. Tomorrow, the cycle begins anew.
This playlist, along with the AGS team’s other favorite geography songs, can be found on Spotify.
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