Go-Jek’s Crystal Widjaja on her reading list, data stack, and tips for learning data analytics

This Q&A is edited from our AMA session with Crystal Widjaja, SVP of business intelligence and growth at Go-Jek.

Data science is arguably more popular, trending, and sought after. What made you become more invested in business intelligence in comparison to data science? — Marcel Christianis

Data science is absolutely a trendy and sexy job right now, and it can be used to solve a lot of very difficult problems. However, I personally love business intelligence because it’s a little bit closer to the day-to-day business operations. I love designing data structures and architecture that work for a lot of different business units and revolutionize how people make decisions.

If I’d like to learn data analytics, what do you think are the first steps that I should take? — Krisna Adi Nugroho

Learning about data and statistics:

• Andrew Ng’s blog/various courses
• The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling by Ralph Kimball and Margy Ross
• Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity–What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves by Christian Rudder
• How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg
• Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight by John W. Foreman
• Public Transit Should Be Uber’s New Best Friend by Nate Silver
• Why Uber Is an Economist’s Dream by Stephen J. Dubner
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t by Nate Silver

Learning to code:

• RegexOne
• Learn Python the Hard Way: A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifyingly Beautiful World of Computers and Code by Zed Shaw
• DataCamp for SQL
• Coursera for R

There’s so much data out there to collect and analyze. How do you keep up with the massive amount of incoming data, prioritize which data point to focus on, and translate that to a decision-making asset? — Yukiko Hime

Yes, there is a mountain of data out there! We prioritize based on our OKRs for the quarter, ensuring that the results of what we decide to analyze will definitely influence a strategic decision—regardless of whether the results are positive or negative.

What’s your daily routine? — Anthony Loekita Harsono

I am very structured with my daily routines!

• 6 am to 7 am: Read. This can be books, articles (those that I saved throughout the day or those people sent me), or the news. Right now I’m reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Professor Yuval Noah Harari.
• 7 am to 7:30 am: Gym
• 8:30 am: Go to work!