A Few Categories of Data Science Six categories

A Few Categories of Data Science

Six categories of Data Scientists We are now at 9 categories after a few updates. Just like there a few categories of statisticians (biostatisticians, econometricians, operations research specialists, actuaries) or business analysts (marketing-oriented, product-oriented, finance-oriented, etc. ) we have different categories of data scientists. First, many data scientists have a job title different from data scientist. Secondly the salary is a little bit different too.

Most of them are familiar or expert in big data. There are other ways to categorize data scientists, see for instance our article on Taxonomy of data scientists. A different categorization would be creative versus mundane. The "creative" category has a better future, as mundane can be outsourced (anything published in textbooks or on the web can be automated or outsourced - job security is based on how much you know that no one else know or can easily learn). Along the same lines, we have science users (those using science, that is, practitioners; often they do not have a Ph. D), innovators (those creating new science, called researchers), and hybrids. Most data scientists, like geologists helping predict earthquakes, or chemists designing new molecules for big pharma, are scientists, and they belong to the user category. Implications for other IT professionals You (engineer, business analyst) probably do already a bit of data science work, and know already some of the stuff that some data scientists do. It might be easier than you think to become a data scientist. Check out our book (listed below in "related articles"), to find out what you already know, what you need to learn, to broaden your career prospects. Are data scientists a threat to your job/career? Again, check our book (listed below) to find out what data scientists do, if the risk for you is serious (you = the business analyst, data engineer or statistician; risk = being replaced by a data scientist who does everything) and find out how to mitigate the risk (learn some of the data scientist skills from our book, if you perceive data scientists as competitors)

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