Ismail came to data from Economics and Politics at the University of Bristol, where the numbers almost never settled anything on their own. What pulled him in was a research project on who does and does not get access to public services in the UK, the first dataset that interested him for its own sake rather than as an exercise.
He learned the mechanics in Stata and R, where the audience for a result was usually other analysts. Consulting changed that. What carried over is the instinct to ask what a figure actually supports; what is new is having to explain it to someone with no reason to care how it was produced.
Away from the desk he runs, cooks, and follows football, where the data and the eye test disagree often enough to keep it interesting.