What is a data scientist? What makes for a good (or great!) data scientist? It’s been challenging enough to determine what a data scientist really is (several people have proposed ways to look at this). The Guardian (a UK publication) said, however, that a true data scientist is as “rare as a unicorn”.
I believe that the data scientist “unicorn” is hidden right in front of our faces; the purpose of this post is to help you find it. First, we’ll take a look at some models, and then I’ll present my version of what a data scientist is (and how this person can become “great”).
#1 Drew Conway’s popular “Data Science Venn Diagram” — created in 2010 — characterizes the data scientist as a person with some combination of skills and expertise in three categories (and preferably, depth in all of them): 1) Hacking, 2) Math and Statistics, and 3) Substantive Expertise (also called “domain knowledge”). Sigue leyendo