Sunday 22 June 2014

Data Scientist as a role

As promised in my last blog, here is my analysis on what does a Data Scientist Role mean and why it is not a new jargon replacing Marketing Consultants or Product Manager or an IT Manager Role which some of my friends pointed out in the last blog.

Remember our teenage days when we were in probably 10th Std and this profound question was asked , Are u going take Science or Arts?.80% of my friends who mostly are Engineers would have said of course Science without a blink of their eye. Little did we know that every innovation has an artist behind that and every scientist has that artist in him which gives him that imagination to innovate. So what I am trying to make a point is that they are just two sides of a same coin.

Coming back to our Data Scientist Role, it is the best example of how a person can present data in the most creative and intuitive manner that it helps business. Also note that the KPIs are different for each business so the rules of analysis differ. The Data Scientist should be able to interpret the data using mathematical and analytical tools and understand the trends.  There is no more need to be an Engineer and learn all the programming languages like C++, java, Dot-net etc. to get a Data Scientist Role. I believe a Business person who understands the Business and can play with some tools is the best person suited for role. It is the best example of a Role which brings Art and Science together. 

As expected this answer did make the students very happy and suddenly there was lot of eagerness to know what this role entails. So I believe there are just few things which can help to make a Data Scientist:-
1.   Business knowledge and acumen in the stream where one wants to take the role
2.   Statistical and analytical tools usage to bring creativity and make sense of the big data
3.     Good communication

Lots of Universities have already started providing full time courses to specialize in this role. Saint Peter’s University in US provides a full time degree course in the same.


There is no need of being an expert on Hadoop platforms and MapReduce functions because they are just another enterprise platforms where the analytics is done. As per Heidrick & Struggles report a single company like Wipro already has around 8000 people on data science and analytics role and it is just going to grow.

Here is what  VP of Development for Big Data projects at IBM, Anjul Bhambhri says in the following blog. 

No comments:

Post a Comment