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Data Scientist – Everything One Needs to Know About This Century’s Hottest Job Profile

Manu Jeevan 25/05/2018

Did you ever stop to think how Flipkart or Amazon’s recommendation system understands your requirement and shows you relevant products which you may be interested in purchasing? Or, for that matter, how matrimonial websites like Jeevansathi.com, Shaadi.com or Bharatmatrimony.com show you matches as per your customized needs? How come banks are able to detect fraudulent credit card transactions? Or what all goes on behind Uber, Ola or Swiggy that enables them to function so smoothly? How do the giants Facebook or Google serve your advertisements? This is where Data Scientists come in. Everything About Data Scientists It was in 2008 that D J Patil and Jeff Hammerbacher, who at that time were leaders of data and analytics efforts at LinkedIn and Facebook respectively, that the title “Data Scientist’ was coined. In this period, they were into data analysis and data product development work of immense magnitude which, certainly was way beyond the traditional role of a data analyst or a business analyst, hence they came up with a new designation ‘data scientist’, which they assigned to themselves. An article published by Dr Patil and Thomas H. Davenport in the 2012 Harvard Business Review, titled “Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century,” triggered the mass popularity of this designation and data science as one of the most popular fields to pursue as a rewarding career across the world. Need for Data Science Deep Learning, Data Science, Machine learning and Big Data have been creating ripples in the media over the past few years. For any organization, taking decisions based on data is not only an intrinsic requirement, but it also makes great commercial sense too. It is the endeavor of every organization to transform itself into a data-driven organization, however, it becomes an extremely daunting task to implement it due to poor understanding of the matter and lack of skilled professionals. The science of analyzing data is not new. It has been in existence for quite some time. Business consultants, technologists, business analysts, data analysts, statisticians and business subject matter experts, were being hired by companies to collectively solve problems and provide solutions, by organizing and trying to intelligently interpret data. Drawing an inference based on structured small data, was what traditional business analysts were trained to. In today’s scenario, with the kind of mountain like voluminous data, streaming data and unstructured data, which need to be analyzed; the new breed of data analysts and data scientists are better equipped. It could be said that that Data Scientists are a much more evolved form of Data Analysts and Business Analysts. They deal with the analysis of Big Data and create data products, dynamic visualization, automated data analysis tools etc. Data scientists with a domain knowledge and applied skills in varied areas like mathematics, statistics, deep learning, machine learning, SQL, SAS, natural language processing (NLP), R, Python, Big Data tools like Hadoop and Spark, Visualization tools like Cogonos, Tableau, click view etc, are in great demand globally. Though the demand for data scientists is growing at a rapid pace, the academic institutions in India and the industry are not equipped to fulfill the need. Any industry, be it IT, Insurance, Telecom, manufacturing, retail, media, healthcare, banking, consulting, automobile, airline, e-commerce, oil, gas, government, start-ups and NGOs; and for that matter every functional area like marketing, operation, HR, finance, etc in India and also all over the world has a growing application of Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Global Demand for Data Scientists Solutions based on data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning have a growing demand, unfortunately adequate number of skilled people are not available to execute these projects efficiently and successfully. The market demand for Data Scientists and Advanced Analysts is expected to suddenly increase by 28% by the year 2020. The roles of data Scientists and Advanced Analysts are globally the fastest growing. Hunting for suitable data scientists and analysts is a task that takes companies roughly five more days, compared to the market average. Professionals with expertise in these areas are much sought after by organizations who are willing to offer dream premium salaries to them. – India needs over 2 lakh data scientists, as per a Nasscom report. – The annual demand for data scientists will reach nearly 7 lakhs by the year 2020. – A shortage of 1.5 million data managers by the year 2018 has been predicted by McKinsey. To give you all an idea; a Chief Data Scientist with over ten years of experience in statistics and mathematics can command a salary of a minimum of one crore annually. On the other hand, Unicorn Data Scientists – a rare breed – an upgraded version of our own racy data scientists; are difficult to find and could earn more than $200,000 per year. India easily has the capability to become the world’s largest hub of skilled Data Scientists, since the country is filled to the brim with the largest pool of people, who are extremely good with mathematics and coding skills. Indian students can easily soon become the leaders in the data science. All that is required is a revised and updated curriculum, complemented with skilled faculty having real time industry experience.

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Manu Jeevan

Manu Jeevan is a self-taught data scientist and loves to explain data science concepts in simple terms. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, or email him at manu@bigdataexaminer.com.