In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the analytics in Big Data Story. In this article we will understand how to become a Data Scientist for Big Data Story.

Data Scientist is a new buzz word, everyone seems to be wanting to become Data Scientist. Let us go over a few key topics related to Data Scientist in this blog post. First of all we will understand what is a Data Scientist.

In the new world of Big Data, I see pretty much everyone wants to become Data Scientist and there are lots of people I have already met who claims that they are Data Scientist. When I ask what is their role, I have got a wide variety of answers.

What is Data Scientist?

Data scientists are the experts who understand various aspects of the business and know how to strategies data to achieve the business goals. They should have a solid foundation of various data algorithms, modeling and statistics methodology.

What do Data Scientists do?

Data scientists understand the data very well. They just go beyond the regular data algorithms and builds interesting trends from available data. They innovate and resurrect the entire new meaning from the existing data. They are artists in disguise of computer analyst. They look at the data traditionally as well as explore various new ways to look at the data.

Data Scientists do not wait to build their solutions from existing data. They think creatively, they think before the data has entered into the system. Data Scientists are visionary experts who understands the business needs and plan ahead of the time, this tremendously help to build solutions at rapid speed.

Besides being data expert, the major quality of Data Scientists is “curiosity”. They always wonder about what more they can get from their existing data and how to get maximum out of future incoming data.

Data Scientists do wonders with the data, which goes beyond the job descriptions of Data Analysist or Business Analysist.

Skills Required for Data Scientists

Here are few of the skills a Data Scientist must have.

• Expert level skills with statistical tools like SAS, Excel, R etc.
• Understanding Mathematical Models
• Hands-on with Visualization Tools like Tableau, PowerPivots, D3. j’s etc.
• Analytical skills to understand business needs
• Communication skills

On the technology front any Data Scientists should know underlying technologies like (Hadoop, Cloudera) as well as their entire ecosystem (programming language, analysis and visualization tools etc.) .

Remember that for becoming a successful Data Scientist one require have par excellent skills, just having a degree in a relevant education field will not suffice.

Final Note

Data Scientists is indeed very exciting job profile. As per research there are not enough Data Scientists in the world to handle the current data explosion. In near future Data is going to expand exponentially, and the need of the Data Scientists will increase along with it. It is indeed the job one should focus if you like data and science of statistics.

Courtesy: emc

Tomorrow

In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various Big Data Learning resources.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)