Table of Contents
- What is Data Science?
- What types of jobs exist in Data Science today?
- What skills are required to be an effective Data Scientist?
- How do I get into Data Science?
- Who's Hiring?
Junaid Butt
Data Scientist
The term 'Data Science' was first coined by DJ Patil (LinkedIn) and Jeff Hammerbacher (Facebook).
"I was at LinkedIn building the data team and Jeff Hammerbacher was bustling at Facebook's data team... One of the things we realised was that we didn't know what to call ourselves...Do you call yourself an analyst? It feels too Wall Street. A research scientist or statistician? Feels too academic..." - DJ Patil
"The most important thing is how you use data to interact with the world, study it and try to come up with new things..." - DJ Patil
This definition is fine as a philosophical definition but if we review job descriptions, you get an idea of what the industry considers to be data science.
Drew Conway's Data Science Venn Diagram
In product led technology companies, there are cross functional teams of software engineers, product managers and Data Scientists.
It is less common to see Data Scientists/ Data Analysts and Data Engineers in their own dedicated functions.
For most companies, the data revolution is underway and is in different stages - this is true for start ups as well.
Which of the 3 Data Science roles that we've discussed today would be responsible for setting up and maintaining a Data Warehouse?
This would be a data architecture decision which would affect all aspects of the data workflow.
This would traditionally be a Data Engineer's job.
Statistical Literacy:
General Workflow:
Visualisation and Communication
Passion!
You don't need a Mathematics or Computer Science Degree to do this!
Courses
If you have a good foundation of programming and statistical skills then you can do the following
Projects - Like Software Engineering, it helps to have a portfolio of Data Science projects in which you've demonstrated key technical skills.
Build web apps with statistics/ ML integrated - Flash/ Shiny. These don't have to be ground breaking or original!
Be involved in community Data Science initiatives and activities.
You work at a SAAS company and your product manager comes to you and says "Signups to the platform are down to the lowest point of the year - what's happening?". What steps do you take to look into this?
Uses of your product have been declining recently - you suspect it is because customers are displeased with the customer experience, your CEO remarks "It makes no sense, our NPS scores are very high". What is the problem with this statement? How would you investigate what's happening?
You work at a newspaper and have built a new recommendation engine which suggests stories to users as they browse through your website. One of the journalists feels that the new algorithm does not promote their articles fairly with respect to others and has scheduled a meeting with you to speak about this - how do you prepare for this meeting?
If you don't like the look of any of the above - solve this \( f(x) = \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} e^{-\frac{1}{2}x^2} dx \)