MONTHLY EDITION
August Edition: Writing Better as a Data Scientist
The benefits of developing your writing skills go from greater visibility as a job candidate to a deeper learning process
Every data scientist is a writer. Even if you haven’t published with us on TDS, you still share slide decks, reports, and code documentation with your managers, stakeholders, and colleagues on a daily basis. Have you ever encountered a job description that didn’t list “strong communication skills” as a requirement? Neither have we.
When you write well about your data science or ML projects, it’s not only your audience that benefits from it—it’s also you, the author. To drive the point home, we’ve collected several recent articles from data practitioners who came to recognize the advantages of developing their writing skills. Scroll down to read about their journeys and to learn from the insights they’ve gained along the way.
If your writerly ambitions go beyond what’s required for your job and you’re thinking about sharing your expertise with a broader professional circle, well, that’s music to our ears. To support more members of our community who want to reap the rewards of public writing, earlier this month we launched Writer’s Workshop: a new series geared towards current and aspiring TDS contributors who’d like to polish their craft. If you’ve yet to read The Art of Promotion, the series’ inaugural post, you’re missing out—it’s a rich resource on building an audience and expanding your reach as a data professional.
Speaking of our authors: if you feel inspired to give them a boost, consider showing your support by becoming Medium members.
TDS Editors Highlights
- How Writing on the Internet Can Help You Get a Data Job
“I started writing about data science for fun. […] But then I realized how helpful those articles I wrote were (and still are) to my career.” Otávio Simões Silveira explains how his blogging led to work opportunities, and shares advice on getting started. (July 2022, 5 minutes) - My Technical Writing Journey
After writing dozens of articles and attracting readers by the thousands, Xiaoxu Gao reflects on the challenge of converting ideas and problems into blog posts that connect with others. (June 2022, 9 minutes) - Writing Can Help You Become a Better Data Scientist
Give your motivation a boost and read this succinct overview by Frank Andrade, who explains how improving your writing can lead to a deeper understanding of the concepts you’re unpacking, and helps you establish your authority in the field (something recruiters are likely to notice, too). (July 2022, 4 minutes) - A Practical Step for Improving Data Literacy
“I would love to see a future where no one is intimidated by the world of data,” says Megan Dibble, who argues that the way to reach that goal is to make data science learning resources more readable and easier to understand. (May 2022, 4 minutes) - My 6-Step Process for Writing Technical Articles
If you feel inspired to finally put quill to paper (or, fine, fingers to keyboard) but find the actual drafting process daunting, Conor O'Sullivan is here to help. His detailed roadmap for technical writers covers everything from idea generation to editing, and will help you push your writing from “hot mess” to “polished gem.”
Original Features
The latest crop of articles and resources by the TDS team:
- The Art of Promotion. Networking, keywords, distribution channels… Our first Writer’s Workshop article covers the essentials of finding—and growing—your audience as a data scientist, on TDS and beyond.
- Author’s Corner. To help you find resources on writing (and related topics), we’ve created this handy, frequently updated digest, which you’ll also see pinned on our homepage.
- “A Data Professional without Business Acumen Is Like a Sword without a Handle.” Our latest Author Spotlight features Senior Data Analyst Rashi Desai, who shared insights about career paths, finding your purpose as a data professional, and the importance of communicating your results effectively.
- Summer Reads for Data Scientists. It’s been a very hot stretch more or less everywhere, so if you want to learn something new but really need it to be beach-reading-friendly, we’ve got you covered with a selection of fun, engaging articles.
Popular Posts
In case you missed them, here are some of the most popular articles we published in the past month.
- 5 Things in Your Resume That Are Keeping You from Getting Your First Job in Data Science by Madison Hunter
- Powerful One-liners in Pandas Every Data Scientist Should Know by Avi Chawla
- Exploratory Data Analysis in Python — A Step-by-Step Process by Andrew D
- 6 Hierarchical Data Visualizations by Kruthi Krishnappa
- How to Develop Online Revenue Streams as a Data Scientist by Pier Paolo Ippolito
If you’d like to join the ranks of our author community, take the plunge and share your work with us. You’ll be part of a group of smart, accomplished writers—including all the new contributors whose work we published for the first time last month: Quentin Gallea, PhD, Renato Sortino, Stacy Li, Sidney Hough, Edgar A Aguilar, Simon Aubury, Josh Berry, Neha Desaraju, Ajay Halthor, María Bräuner, Soran Ghaderi, Francisco Castillo Carrasco, Pierre Blanchard, TonyM, Leonardo Rigutini, Christian Wanser, Ning Jia, Nick Konz, Phil Bell, Carolyn Wang, Nnamdi Uzoukwu, Felipe González-Pizarro, Andrew Blance, Branden Lisk, Daniel Kulik, Mark Derdzinski, and Othmane Hamzaoui, among others.
