Data Horizon

Data Science

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Data Science

Introduction

Andrés Aldaz's photo
Andrés Aldaz
·

3 min read

Table of contents

Career Opportunities

I think we have all heard that "data is the new gold" or maybe something even quirkier such as "Big Data holds all the answers". Well, I may have to disagree with the latter. Definitely, there has been a tremendous increase in opening positions related to data analysis as well as other areas that are inherent in Data Science.

There is an interesting report, by ITPro which suggests that Europe may need 346,000 more data scientists. But, I think that we may have to define what is a data scientist and how are they contributing to the field.

What is a Data Scientist

After careful research I jumped to a definition that certainly caught my eye:

Data scientists are analytical experts who utilize their skills in both technology and social science to find trends and manage data. They use industry knowledge, contextual understanding, scepticism of existing assumptions – to uncover solutions to business challenges.

by mastersindatascience.org.

The part that really caught my attention was: contextual understanding. So I thought about it for a second... Then... Apart from learning about data structures, data warehousing, model deployment and so on... I have to understand the underlying structure behind the data which I am working on? After questioning other professionals, they all agreed that data scientists that understand the business logic, especially the ones who have industry knowledge related to the area of expertise are in great demand. For example, last week I had a lecture given by the head of the Data Analytics department of a very reputable insurance company in Spain. Their main objectives for developing predictive models were of course: Insurance fraud and identifying quitters(clients who have a greater proclivity leave) But two hours into the lecture, I realised that he had such a profound knowledge of the dynamics of the company, especially the legal ones given that Europe enforces a system of rigid regulations related to Data Protection. (If you are interested you may check the latest about GDPR ( General Data Protection Regulation)) image.png

Areas and specializations

There are various roles related to DS thus you may have to choose a specific sub-domain from the data ecosystem

Business Intelligence

image.jpg BI is a domain which focuses on transforming data into insights that may help a business or organization to gain some kind of competitive advantage.

The average Base Salary in the US for a BI Analyst is around $87,685 ( BuiltIn.com, 2021)

Top BI Tools

  • SAP Business Objetcs
  • Datapine
  • MicroStrategy
  • SAP Business Intelligence
  • Yellowfin BI
  • QlikSense
  • Zoh Analytics
  • Sisense
  • Microsoft Power BI
  • Tableau

    Data Warehousing and Engineering

    Data Visualization

    Data Architecture and Management

    Data Analytics

    Data Mining and Statistical Analysis

Data ScienceCareer