What is Data Science and How to make a career in it?

Ahh..I won’t lie, It’s quite simple to start a career in Data Science. You just have to be street smart 😛
There is no fix job or delivery when you work as a Data Scientist or Decision Scientist, you have to take up things as it comes to you.
One day you might be crunching numbers, the other day creating data models to create a dashboard, the next day creating a Recommendation Engine in a programming language you have never heard before, let alone having an experience in it !!

But, that’s the charm of the job, the challenge to deliver 🙂

Let’s start with Day 1, don’t rush. I can safely assume that if you are reading this post, you might be in one of the three buckets given below:-

1. I neeeed MONEY, I want to switch from an IT job, Testing profile
2. My Manager wants me to learn Machine Learning and Data Science. He said that I will get an onsite chance with this thing on the CV. Grow up, He is not sending you anywhere !!!!!!
3. I am a Data Scientist, but I don’t know Jack about Correlation, Auto correlation, I fail to understand things as simple as Standard Deviation. I want to Learn.

4. I have 2/3/4 years of experience and I want to switch to Amazon, Flipkart, Ola, Microsoft, etc etc. Cool 🙂

See, basically, I don’t give a duck why you landed on this page, but if you are here and If you follow this page like you follow your Boss, then by the end of 100 days, you will be better Data Scientist if not a better person 😛

Dictionary meaning of Data Scientist

Data Scientist (Noun) – Someone who does precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge

Also see – Wizard, Magician

Basically, Data is everywhere, whether you use an app or a website, every second a lot of data is being produced. The data is more like trash if you don’t know how to use it. But, if you can take up that structured or unstructured data and use some fancy scientific methods and algorithms to get insights from the same trash, then you will come to know the power of Data Science.

Uber is making Driverless car, you get recommendation on Amazon which is mostly relevant, you are shown relevant ads on facebook, all of these are small but important examples of how data is being used in today’s era.

On an overall level, I would say that a Data Scientist will be involved in at least these sort of projects in the first 4-6 years of his career:-
1. Extracting insights from unstructured and structured data
2. Building dashboards and maintaining reports
3. Writing SQL queries to solve ad-hoc request
4. Building products like a recommendation engine, predictive model, classification model, etc.

Data Science is the intersection of Mathematics Expertise, Technology, and Business Acumen. You will understand Data Science with time and by the end of the course, you will frame a different definition of Data Science which might or might not be correct, but you will be confident on it 😛

Below is a copied image, but there is no point making the same thing again. Below is a good image to differentiate between a Business Analyst and a Data Scientist. So, choose your role carefully:-

Once you are ready to walk along with me in this 100 Days Challenge, do say with me “Tum mujhe Data do, Main Tumhe analysis dunga“

How to make a career in Data Science?
Let’s divide the complete course or your data science career in few parts:-
1. Query Language – Your bread and butter, SQL
2. Visualization Tool – The thing which will please your Client or Boss, Power BI, Tableau, etc.
3. Programming Language – I would prefer Python over R, any time and every time
4. Statistics – Please don’t ignore this part, you can never get enough success without acing Maths and Statistics.

Once you get some knowledge about everything, you will start connecting the dots to see that a complete Data Scientist is an amalgamation of all the four given above.

XtraMous