A data scientist is an analytics professional responsible for collecting, analyzing and interpreting data to help drive decision-making in an organization.
As part of data science initiative, data scientists often must work with large amounts of data to come up with innovative solutions.
In businesses, data scientists typically mine data for information that can be used to make predictions and help with decision making.
While data analysts use information from limited datasets to solve specific problems for organizations, data scientists pull from large and unstructured datasets to identify risks and provide outcome predictions.
Data analysts need strengths in mathematics, communications and social sciences. They benefit from understanding business economics, and consumer behaviour.
Structured data is data that fits neatly into data tables and includes discrete types such as numbers, short texts, and dates. Unstructured data doesn't fit neatly into a data table because of its size or nature: for example, audio and video files and large text documents.
There is a demand for data scientists presently, and you can join the train if you're serious about data, and have a knack for utilizing technology effectively as regards data.
Data scientists can go into data exploration as the demand arise, understand patterns, and garner insights to help with solutions to problems and create new products or services ideas.
Data scientists gather data, and transform it into visuals such as graphs, charts and the likes. Today, you can leverage AI to help with presenting data, and generating insights.
Soft skills will be required for data scientists which include critical thinking, collaboration skills, problem solving skills and creativity.
It is better to avoid working in silos; work with a team instead. It is also essential for you to make use of illustrations and visualization to better deliver your presentation.
When it comes to hard skills, you'll need to be good with programming languages like Python and SQL.
Finally
There are many credible tech institutes that offer online education for you to study in the required amount of time for you to become a certified and professional data scientist. Online learning platforms like Udemy and Coursera are good enough for you to start out and begin your journey as a data scientist. Good luck!
Image credit: Getty Images
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