What Exactly Does a Data Scientist Do?
<p>Data Scientists have been called many things:</p>
<ul>
<li>“A Data Scientist is a statistician who lives in San Francisco”</li>
<li>“Professional modellers, but not like that”</li>
<li>“I get paid to Google Stack Overflow”</li>
<li>“I sell magic to executives”</li>
</ul>
<p>Or, my personal favourite:</p>
<ul>
<li>“Data Science is statistics on a Mac”</li>
</ul>
<p>As this smorgasbord of job descriptions shows, <strong>it can be really hard to get a clear picture on what a Data Scientist role actually involves day-to-day</strong>. Lots of the existing articles out there — while excellent — date from 2012–2020, and in a field that evolves as fast as Data Science these can quickly become outdated.</p>
<p>In this article, my aim is to peel back the proverbial covers and give a personal insight into life as a Data Scientist in 2023.</p>
<p>By drawing on my experiences of working in 3 different Data Science teams, I’ll try to help three types of people:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Aspiring Data Scientists</strong>: I’ll give a realistic insight into what the job involves, so you can make a more informed decision about whether it’s for you and what skills to work on</li>
<li><strong>Data Scientists</strong>: Spark new ideas for things to try in your team and/or give you a way to answer the question “So what is it you <em>actually</em> do?”</li>
<li><strong>People who work with (or want to hire) Data Scientists</strong>: Get to know what the heck we actually do (and, perhaps more importantly, what we <em>don’t</em> do)</li>
</ol>
<h1>It’s not all self-driving cars, ChatGPT, and Deep Learning</h1>
<p>The Head of AI at a large tech company once told me that the biggest misconception he encounters about Data Scientists is that we’re always building deep learning models and doing “fancy AI stuff.”</p>
<p>Now don’t get me wrong — Data Science <em>can</em> get very fancy indeed, but it encompasses a lot more than Artificial Intelligence and its flashy use cases. Equating Data Science with AI is sort of like…</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/what-exactly-does-a-data-scientist-do-42c53db57df5">Read More</a></strong></p>