The work of data science is increasingly ubiquitous—computational systems are there “in the wild” when ethnographers go into the field, and have consequences for the human experience that is so central to ethnographic understanding

The work of data science is increasingly ubiquitous—computational systems are there “in the wild” when ethnographers go into the field, and have consequences for the human experience that is so central to ethnographic understanding. Data science also offers new opportunities for mixed methods research, for example to generate a multidimensional understanding of human experience both digital/online and offline.
For data scientists, meanwhile, ethnography can offer a richer understanding of data and its provenance, and the sociocultural implications of data science work. As Nate Silver has written, “Numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. We speak for them. We imbue them with meaning…. Before we demand more of our data, we need to demand more of our selves.” There is huge potential when we demand “more of ourselves”, but to realize that potential, people from both fields have to be in the room — https://www.epicpeople.org/data-science-and-ethnography/