Computer science professor Hanspeter Pfister said that the growth of data science was such that “it’s basically becoming, if you will, another pillar of the scientific inquiry.”
“We’re amassing all these huge data sets,” said Pfister, who co-teaches with Blitzstein, adding, “all of these data sets contain something, and it’s not quite clear what they contain until you have data scientists look at it.”
This fall, to satisfy student interest in the burgeoning field of study, Blitzstein and Pfister are co-teaching CS109: “Data Science,” a new course with a total enrollment of 327 students, including 202 undergraduates, according to Pfister.
Pfister said he and Blitzstein started to think about the class about a year and a half ago and designed it this past summer.
“I’m extremely happy to be doing this together with Joe,” Pfister said. “He is just able to relay very deep technical concepts in a conversational manner such that, in my opinion, [the material] is very easy to understand. And so it’s been really fun watching him teach these complicated concepts in a way that makes it accessible to non-statistics concentrators.”
OUTSIDE THE DATA FIELD
Statistics professors emphasized Blitzstein’s generosity, humor, and dedication to students as defining traits of his presence at Harvard.
“That’s generosity beyond anything I encounter normally in practically any individual at Harvard,” Harrington said, pointing out the many hours that his colleague dedicates to individual students outside the classroom.
“He’s a very caring person and tries to help everybody,” Morris said. “He’s one of these guys that just make things go better for everybody, and he gets along with everybody very well.”
To undergraduates, Blitzstein’s personal investment in their education is evident in his daily interactions with students.
“He’s just generally a very caring person. I think more so than other professors I’ve been in contact with, he’s really good at just like asking general questions like ‘How are you doing?’ and ‘How things are going?’” Chiu said. “I think that just because how Joe treats his students, I feel a lot more comfortable being open.”
Chen added that Blitzstein’s work ethic mirrors his commitment to undergraduates.
“Joe stays up really late, but he stays up really late because he really cares about what he does, and he really loves what he does,” he said.
In his limited down time, Blitzstein serves as the faculty advisor for the undergraduate chess club. He is also an ardent fan of George R. R. Martin’s series “A Song of Ice and Fire” and the books of science fiction author Isaac Asimov.
In fact, Blitzstein said he once considered writing himself.
“I wanted to be a science fiction writer when I was a kid, but I never got very far with it,” he said.
But for members of the Statistics Department at Harvard, Blitzstein’s choice to enter academia has been a benefit to all parties.
“He has enabled likely a whole generation of Harvard student to engage with that and go down many different pathways, whether it’s into computer science or genetics or finance or whether it’s just not a quantitative field at all,” Blyth said. “He’s made something special of it.”
—Staff writer Francesca Annicchiarico can be reached at fannicchiarico01@college.harvard.edu. Follow her at @FRAnnichiarico.
—Staff writer John P. Finnegan can be reached at johnfinnegan@college.harvard.edu. Follow him at @finneganspake.