I just spent the day with some of the smartest women in town—for free! I signed up for the Women in Data Science (WiDS) NYC conference. The room was jam packed and, apparently, the waiting list was even longer.

What is data science? Basically, it’s anything to do with the combination of numbers AND (this is the really important part) creativity. These two elements are used to problem solve a wide variety of questions: anything from improved customer experience to climate change to the relationship between fried chicken and labradoodles (really!).

I want to give a big shout out to Dr. Tian Zheng @tz33cu a brilliant and funny statistics(!) professor. She emphasized the importance of bringing the skill set that you have—whatever it is—to the table; of working collaboratively, since no one person can have all of the answers; and of sharing the process and methods in a public forum so that others can replicate and improve on the final product, which is never really final.

Technically, this is not exclusively a quirky NYC activity, since WiDS has conferences across the US and around the world!