Greeting from an analyst in Africa.

Since as a data analyst I know a little too much about what’s possible with data I will remain faceless and nameless for now.

As some of you may have noticed from my posts I love to analyze things. I love graphs and data and interpreting them. Analysis involves splitting things into their constituent parts and exploring them in greater detail.

As a child a broken toy was an excuse for me to take it apart to see its insides and how it worked. When I was introduced to subjects like biology, geography and science at school I found myself in heaven. This meant I could now explore the way the world worked (without having to wait for the earth to break)

That love for the natural sciences has only grown with the years. I now have a wide grasp in fields as diverse as:
• Geology
• Paleontology
• Geomorphology
• Anthropology
• Archeology
• Evolutionary biology
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Astronomy
• Information science
• Quantum physics
• Chaos theory
• Etc. etc.

I have noticed in a number of introductory and other posts that a few of our number have found difficulty in reconciling what they were taught as (Evangelical Christian/Catholic/Protestant/Mormon/Other) children with what they have learned later in life.

Their early exposure to religion appeared to be irreconcilable with later learnings and understanding of life. Many found what they read in the bible to be at loggerheads with what they learned from the sciences etc.

I was raised a Mormon by my mother (my father, a medical doctor, was an occasional Bible reading agnostic) and so I got a full dose of these, so perceived, irreconcilables not only from the Bible but from the Book of Mormon and a few other scriptures and modern-day prophets too.

If I look to my family tree it has entire branches with multiple generations of ministers. On my Scottish side I have links to John Knox and many Church of Scotland ministers (they even took the Church of Scotland to Canada). On my Dutch side, many Dutch Reformed Church ministers and on my German side missionaries to Africa. My DNA is well and truly Bible saturated.

I also have, sprinkled in the mix, doctors, surgeons, judges, politicians (yuck, I know) and other intellectual types.

You can just imagine the mental acrobatics I needed to do to reconcile this Christian heritage with all the things I learned in my love for science.

I will post more on that mental and spiritual gymnastics later since I see the religion and philosophy tags have become very topical of late.

The discussions are robust but surprisingly respectful (compared to how religious discussions generally turn out online when atheists and religionists go head to head).

This bodes well for steemit.com. It’s also great to see steemit.com expanding its popular and consistently earning categories out of just the crypto related categories.

People are starting to share their more vulnerable sides and are being rewarded for it. This began with the introduceyourself category and has led to greater experimentation with content and curation. Dan’s heartfelt thoughts received a warm response and that has led content contributors and curators to rethink new categories.

I also think the “us and them” nature of the religious/philosophy category is fueling their rise.
The “religious wales” and the “atheist whales” will vote up a post that they identify with but also vote up a well written post from the opposition camp out of respect. The well written posts are also garnering thoughtful comments and engaging debate. All good for steemit.com.

And here I am again wandering of into analysis during an introduction post....

I’m probably a lot older than most of the age demographic on steemit.

The first computer I worked on was not a PC but an Apple II

I have worked with floppy discs and stiffy disks

I had 64 kb RAM and was excited to get a 386 MHz processor upgrade at work

I'm not as old as punch-cards though.

I really enjoy reading all the content and observing the interactions on steemit.com. As the early beginnings of a truly interesting social experiment my analytical glands are going wild at the fact that I have a ring side seat.