Dalston Ward is a Data Analyst – Applied Machine Learning at Decide. He has been with the company since July 2021. In 2017 he earned his PHD in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis. He joins us this month to share how his academic interests led him to a role on the Applied Machine Learning team at Decide, and how he believes better decision making and better decision science could change the world.
You have a PhD in Political Science, and are now working on applied machine learning. Tell us how that happened?
Modern political science is very data driven and very empirical. A lot of my training was in statistics, coding, and machine learning. When I was looking for a position as a professor I faced a very unfriendly job market. There just weren’t a lot of opportunities, and where those opportunities existed were not places I wanted to live. After a while I just didn’t want to make those sacrifices anymore, and turned to the private sector.
A lot of the things I found interesting in academia were things I could do more of in the private sector. I love working with data, writing code, and building systems to process data more efficiently. I love telling stories with data. In academia you can do that, but it’s a very slow process. It takes years to do a single research project. With that in mind, I looked for opportunities where I could work on a team and have a tangible impact on the world. All of those things led me to look at applied machine learning opportunities. I looked for a job in St. Louis and found a job at Decide.
I really appreciated the way the company supports employees living their life the way they want, and don’t expect you to place work at the center of your life.
Other than being exposed to data and research, how did a PhD in a social science help prepare you for a career in the hard sciences?
I think getting a social science PhD was extremely helpful for the job I have now. In social science we study human behavior. Humans are notoriously difficult to predict and prone to a wide variety of behaviors that can appear pretty random at times. Having insight into the type of factors that impact the decisions people make is helpful when doing machine learning for the digital advertising industry.
At Decide we are really focused on understanding which ads will perform better. Ultimately that comes down to user decision making, which is just another way of saying it all comes down to understanding human behavior and translating that understanding into our technology.
True or false: the best way to inform other people you have a PhD is by wearing a giant “DR.” pendant, with the period being a spinning wheel?
Definitely true. There are a few ways you can let people know you’re a doctor. One thing I thought about doing was wearing my fancy academic gown all year, but it was uncomfortable in the St. Louis heat and not warm enough for the St. Louis winter.
That idea didn’t go very far.
Do you make people call you Dr.?
No, but I did put my name in my partner’s phone number as Dalston Ward, PhD. She’s a lawyer, so her name has a “JD” after it in my phone. I figured fair was fair.
Seriously, you have a remarkable background. How, in your opinion, would improved decision-making and decision science make the world a better place?
There is a lot of room for improved decision-making and decision sciences that would make the world a better place, especially in public policy, nonprofits, and healthcare. Those are areas where machine learning hasn’t yet had the same type of impact it has had in the private sector. There are a lot of ways we can use data to make decisions that would make governments more efficient and allow nonprofits to use more of their resources to directly help people. In private industry better decision making and decision science can better align profit-making goals and societal goals. In healthcare, for example, we can use better decision science to lower costs through improved efficiency.
That alignment of private sector motives and public goals is one of the more immediate ways we could change the world. I went to school to make the world a better place, and I think we have the opportunity to do that in a big way through better decision making.
