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 10^th 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. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2012/02/16/ibms-anjul-bhambhri-on-what-is-a-data-scientist/

Big data ->Big Employment

I recently visited a college for a talk on Big Data. The College had a combination of MCA and MBA students and a nice set of smart enthusiastic students with gleam in their eyes.  Now I always get excited to see this enthusiasm because I feel that energy and enthusiasm of our youth is what will make a difference to the world in the coming decade.

As we started discussing on usual Big Data topics the discussion started flowing into how this is going to create and shape new requirements and drive the technology in coming future. The most important aspect being how this huge nexus of Data is going to drive new roles in the market and the skills required for the same. Here I was actually able to touch the cord because suddenly they all were very excited on what this new role entails.

The fact that Gartner’s prediction is Big Data is going to create around 4.4 million new IT jobs globally by 2015 reflects this fact. The jobs would involve around technology to handle the data and capabilities to analyze and make sense out of this data set. By 2015 it is also predicted that 80% of the data is going to be uncertain, so in spite of us having all data available there would be a need to know and  determine how to use the data, then determining what confidence level needs to act on the data and in what context is the data available.

So the next question of course from then was what are these new jobs?

Now I had grabbed their attention fully and tried explaining how the counting of mouse clicks on an advertisement, traditional analytics and CRM and MDM data collection, mobile phone updates, and so many more combine together to keep data analysts and data engineers including the CDO and CEO and CMO and everyone concerned with accumulation of data busy and thus keep creating employment opportunities.

The newest and hottest job in Data Management is the person that can interpret such data in innovative ways for their employer, the Data Scientist.

What exactly is a Data Scientist?

“A data scientist is that unique blend of skills that can both unlock the insights of data and tell a fantastic story via the data.”

Anjul Bhambhri, Vice President of Big Data Products at IBM describes the Data Scientist role as below 

“Data scientists are part digital trend spotter and part storyteller stitching various pieces of information together. These are people or teams at organizations that sift through the explosion of data to discover what the data is telling them.” 

And that drove them to next set of question what skills are required to be a Data Scientist. And the answer made them happy and that would be in my next blog.

What does it take to be a Data Scientist?