#ISMEianWrites
Data Scientist: Making Sense Out of Data
Prof. (Dr.)
S SHYAM PRASAD,
Professor – Marketing,
ISME
About data scientists
The growth of InformationTechnology has
spawned many new professions; the evolution
of big data has ushered in a new career line of
data scientist. This article attempts to answer a)
what is data science b) who is a data scientist?
c) What does he do? and d) Why is this job
attracting much attention?
Who is a data scientist?
A data scientist job has evolved from the
business or data analyst role. Data scientists
source rich data sets, analyze them, create visual
representation of the data, build mathematical
models and prepare reports on their findings.
A data scientist uses varied techniques and
theories drawn from wide variety of fields
such as mathematics, statistics, operations
research, information
science,
and computer science, including signal
processing, probability models, machine
learning, statistical learning, data
mining, database, data
engineering, pattern
recognition
and
learning, visualization, predictive
analytics, uncertainty
modeling, data warehousing, data
compression, computer
programming, artificial
intelligence, and high performance
computing. Data scientists’ role
encompasses the whole gamut
of data analysis in contrast to the
traditional roles of data analyst.
Anjul Bhambhri, vice president of bi g data products
at IBM, says, “A data scientist is somebody who
is inquisitive, who can stare at data and spot
trends. It’s almost like a Renaissance individual
who really wants to learn and bring change to an
organization.” A good data scientist also needs
to possess strong business intellect and flair
to communicate findings to his or her business
managers in an appropriate manner. The data
scientist needs have an eye for detail as well as
the ablility to see the big picture.
The difference between a traditional data
analyst and a data scientist is that the former
may look only at data from a single source – for
example from sales system – whereas a data
scientist examines data from multiple sources.
His job is not just report on data but to look at it
from multiple angles and discern what it means
and report.
The job of a data scientist
The job of a data scientist is a dynamic one.
Data scientists work on all kinds of data such
as aircraft flying data, footballer’s performance
data, court case data, poll performance data,
tax payers spending data, peoples’ health data,
credit card holders’ usage data and so on. One