Is Penelope Garcia a "Data Scientist"?

Yesterday, while watching an old episode of Criminal Minds, a question came to me: “Is Penelope Garcia a ‘Data Scientist’?” Some people have compared ‘data scientists’ to the CSI, looking at evidence, but I have not seen many ‘data scientists’ using microscopes and scalpels, rather they mainly rely on computers, data, structured or semi-structured...

For those who haven’t watched Criminal Minds, the TV series follows the exploits of the Behavioural Analysis Unit of the FBI, and they solve complicated crimes, from serial killers, kidnappers... through behavioural profiling mainly. Penelope Garcia is the one who uses computers, databases, video feeds... all sorts of data to help catch the criminals from her ‘office of supreme genius’.

She accesses databases, matches and intersects them, conducts searches, runs algorithms on all sorts of data including videos, photos and audio recordings. She is very adept at using huge volumes of data to narrow down the suspect list.

In her back-story, she is described as a hacker. 

I would say that of all the characters in Criminal Minds, she is the one who comes closest to the image many people have of a ‘Data Scientist’, someone who can do amazing things with data.

But she doesn’t work alone; the person she interacts the most with is Derek Morgan.

Derek Morgan is probably the most action oriented member of the BAU team. Often he is the one who provides direction to Penelope, how to use the vast amount of information at her disposal so she can come up with more usable, actionable information and sometimes even where to start looking.

In his back-story, he served in the bomb squad and as a former police officer before joining the BAU.

Not many people would see him as a “Data Scientist”; his knowledge is from his experience on the field. But without his input and the interaction with him, Penelope’s impact would be reduced.

A third member of the team could also be seen as a “Data Scientist”, Dr Spencer Reid. Yes, he has a PhD (more than one actually). His IQ is 187.

Dr Spencer Reid brings a profound knowledge of psychological/sociological theories and statistics/mathematics to the BAU. Using his deep knowledge of these fields and synthesising them, Dr Reid is able to quickly point the team into the most likely areas where the un-sub/suspect is to be found. He also helps Penelope Garcia use her hacking skills more effectively. However, he is quite technology unfriendly, preferring not to use a tablet or email even, favouring books, notebooks and letters.

Who do you think is the “Data Scientist” of the trio?

 If this was put to a vote, I guess most people would pick Penelope Garcia because of the computer skills, coming in second would be Dr Reid because of his theoretical knowledge and IQ, and third would be Derek Morgan.

Makes sense, right?

My view is that, together, they make a good “Data Science” team.

I go back to the Drew Conway inspired diagram; a “data scientist” is a combination of Hacking/Computer science skills (Penelope), Domain Knowledge (Derek) and Stats/Maths (Spencer):

The whole gamut of ‘data science’ functions need not be done by a single individual.

Very often, especially in the case of vendors, it is important to acknowledge that the perfect data scientist is a unicorn, and the solution lies in combining the skills of different people into an effective team. And of course, for the team to function, each team member needs to realise his/her role and respect the expertise of the others, seems to work very well in Criminal Minds.