The study of populations, and individuals

In the past five years, I've kinda gotten to know this local family. Through multiple avenues, our paths have crossed regularly, and given mum, dad and daughter are all lovely, I've always enjoyed taking a few extra minutes to chat.

Throughout the course of our brief chats over the years, I haven't actually learned a great deal about this family. I know they're a family of means, and my impression was always that it was self-made means - as in Luca*, the father, has worked bloody hard for what they have. Until today, I never knew what he did. Not sure why it's never come up, but around here it seems conversation is generally surf-oriented, not work-oriented (just like many of the people, funnily enough).

As it turns out, Luca is a demographer. For those who aren't familiar with demography, this field - and those like Luca who study it - is concerned with statistics relating to population. Building on his curiosity, and leveraging his great intellect, Luca founded a very successful population modelling service 20 years ago, whereby he and his team produce and interpret data for an incredible array of private and government clients.

To me, data analysis is fascinating, and it was very clear Luca shared this sentiment as he spoke very passionately about the company and types of data they model, and for what purposes. You can tell almost immediately whether somebody loves their vocation or not, based on the tone and expression of the response to "so what do you do?". When, after five years of blissful ignorance to the source of this families livelihood, I finally posed that exact query, Luca lit up like a kid who's just been asked why Charizard is their favourite Pokémon.

Over the next half an hour, Luca regaled to me the story of how it all began and how it's grown, citing case study examples from the various major organisations the company provides data for. For somebody who's pretty much grown up with the internet, it blows my mind trying to comprehend how a service like this can be born in the pre-internet world. To me, it really was one of those "how did we do this before the internet" moments. It's easy to take for granted the wealth of data at our fingertips, without taking a minute to consider the folks like Luca who've toiled in the background for decades to provide it.

Today, I learned about demography. I also learned a little more about the power and value of data. We really do live in a world where knowledge is the most prized commodity.

* Real name has been changed for privacy reasons.