This is a statement which I’ve been thinking about extensively for a while now. How do you become a data scientist? (or rather how should I become a data scientist).

The conclusion that I have now (subject to change) is not MOOCs. Without a doubt, MOOCs will help, infact I’m eyeing an article right now and following it as the basis of improving my knowledge. To be fair the article also links an additional two articles on management and [technical] (http://www.bigdatarepublic.com/author.asp?section_id=2809&doc_id=256240) sides of ‘Big Data Education’. Suggesting, that even MOOCs are not sufficient.

But I think we need to take one step back. The importance of data science is the interpretation of data. So much emphasis is placed on algorithms and data visualization we forget the why. Why are we doing this analysis in the first place?

Why

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. – Preface, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

This is similar to why we comment code. We comment to explain the why, not the what we are doing. Similarly data science should be used to manage decisions (the why) not show how or why you’re doing something. There is so much emphasis on how we can do data science, yet we forget that it is for people.

We must understand why we employ a certain algorithm, a certain statistic, a certain method in our analytics. This is why I think MOOCs are insufficient. They only demonstrate the how, not the why. (Note that this is frequently echoed by many).

Business Analyst

As analysts in training, our least worry should be our technical skills. Our biggest worry should be our business analyst skills. We are rarely trained or even consider ideas on how we present ideas, what diagrams and pictures to use, or even how it is written. This is something that I will continually improve more and more.

The Future

Courses from Big Data University has interested me, and I will be looking at completing the Hadoop course soon. Also Social Network Analysis course is definitely something I will be completing in the upcoming months, since I view it as something which is essential to my arsenal of knowledge.