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Data Science: 5 Skills to Become a Data Scientist

Photo by William Iven on Unsplash [5].
Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

Regardless of whether you are currently a Data Scientist or not, there is always room to be one if you have the urge to learn new skills. Many young IT folks and even seasoned managers often ask me about the various paths they can take to be a Data Scientist. A few days back I was creating a Job description and was thinking…hmm…what kind of Data Scientist would I hire?

Keeping this in mind I thought to pen down my thoughts here for anyone who is aspiring to be a data scientist or is looking for a change in career. So here I am with the 5 most important skills I would want in a Data Scientist whom I would hire for my company.

  1. Programming Skills

One thing which I would strongly recommend is to be proficient in one programming language and it can be either R or Python or Julia. But be good in at least one of them. With the advent of an infinite number of products in Data Science, I see an army of what I call the GUI generation. I believe programming opens up the logical side of your brain and that’s what I am interested in. Be Logical to be a Data Scientist.

  1. Mathematics – Statistics & Linear Algebra

Primarily to know what’s going on behind the "Black Box" of the various statistical models. You would say that there are many out of the box libraries in Python and R and you can use them. However, it is really important to understand how the models work and how to tune the variables of each model to get the desired accuracy. Good knowledge of Statistics and Linear Algebra would be a good add-on to your Data Science Skill arsenal.

3. Machine Learning

If you would be working as a Data Scientist, it is 100% sure that you should have an excellent understanding of machine learning techniques and algorithms such as KNN, Naïve Bayes, SVM, Decision Trees, Logistic Regression, etc. And you should have a good knowledge of how to use the libraries of Python and R to implement these models. It is really important to have experience in the operationalization of Machine Learning models and workflow to successfully deploy the models in Production. Nonetheless, you should also have a good understanding of using toolkits like Numpy, Plotly, Pandas, Seaborn, etc.

4. Communication

My strong recommendation to hunt for a Data Scientist would be to look for an Individual with an open mindset and an urge for learning and advancing in the new and upcoming skillset. One who is open to confidently take charge and bring new ideas on-board which can help in improving the Data Platforms and use of data for business value. It is really important that a Data Scientist has a ‘storytelling’ ability through data to translate what is a mathematical result into an actionable insight or intervention. Being at the intersection of business, technology, and data, individuals should possess the skillset of telling a Data Science story in a Business language to each of the stakeholders. A story can be told visually by either using one of the BI tools like Tableau or use the Python or R visualization frameworks like Dash or Shiny.

5. Data-Driven Mindset

My strong preference would be to hire an individual who is a data-driven problem solver. I would strongly suggest an aspiring data scientist build skills in Data Wrangling and exploration. It would be a great addition to learn more about the basics of Data Architecture & Data Modeling as well as the dynamics of the database platforms. Strong SQL knowledge would be really helpful for Data Analysis and exploration. It is really important for a Data Scientist to have the domain knowledge to work on building the Machine learning models. So work on learning more about how does the business work and what factors impact the business and customer behavior.

Apart from the above primary skillset, I would strongly suggest aspiring data scientist build their portfolio of projects using the data sets available on various open data platforms. Embark on data science competitions on Kaggle as you get to work on various problems that can help you build your skills in the area of Data Science. But the most important skill which you need to have is to be Logical and be Open-minded.

Being a Data Scientist is much more than just being able to write codes, it’s about understanding the business domain and have a very open-minded and logical perspective towards data. It takes a lot of exploration, practice, and patience to be a good data scientist and the one final advice I can give you is not to fall into the trap of resources on the internet which claims to make you a good data scientist in few days.


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