People are often surprised to learn that my background is chemistry. Data science job adverts almost always specify physics, mathematics, or computer science. So how does a chemist become a data scientist? Here’s what worked for me.
I started my undergraduate degree in chemistry at Imperial College London in 2007. I mostly took physical chemistry courses that covered a decent amount of mathematics. I didn’t recognise it at the time, but the all the linear algebra turned out to be particularly important — it’s fundamental to most applied mathematics.