What does a Data Scientist do and how will they rule the business world?

In an earlier article, we spoke about why businesses should be using Data Science, machine learning and AI. In the second of the series, we look at what Data Scientists do and what benefit they can bring to an organisation. 

In the modern business parlance:

• Data Engineers work with storing, housing, forming and managing the collection of data
• Data Analysts work on data history; determining what has been, and
• Data Scientists work in the data’s future; determining what will be.

The science of data is a predictive discipline which uses the mathematics and methodology of physics to infer causal and law-like patterns. But the world of human data is not law-like. It is often messy and unpredictable, especially at the individual level - and so the science of data is not physics. It is perhaps, equally an artful endeavour.

To make sense of sometimes curious, odd and counter-intuitive predictions, a Data Scientist needs an understanding of business to determine sense and to discard meaningless outcomes. They need computer programming expertise to manage the scale of human data, and to build the tools that automate predication and use its results and they need design and communication skills to translate the technical results into meaningful business action. 

The co-incidence of skills needed to predict the future is an expanding, practical toolset, not found solely in the ‘narrow’ professions it builds upon. Few Programmers are Data Scientists; few Mathematicians are Business Analysts, few Business Analysts are Programmers. Few, of any of these have enough broad business experience and can communicate and understand business strategy. This is the domain of a Data Scientist and it would be unthinkable to begin any programme of Digital Transformation without someone bringing all of this together as insight.

The training of a Data Scientist is an intensive programme of applied and theoretical learning in each of these areas. A demanding speciality that rewards both its practitioners - and their employers. The passionate Data Scientist will expand their skill set further than ever before, and certainly further than many of their peers. And then, more so...

The employer, lucky enough to have on-board, one or more, trained Data Scientists, is rewarded with a whole new way of seeing their business, its future and its past. Plus an ability to make business decisions informed by real trends as measured, observed and qualified: enhancing business insight of its leaders; inspiring new strategies and revealing failures quickly and with a known confidence. What’s not to like?

Do you have a budding Data Scientist in your organisation, or can see the need to build a capability from scratch? See our data courses here.