I was recently asked five questions by Alex Woodie of Datanami for the article, “So You Want To Be A Data Scientist” that he was preparing. He used a few snippets from my full set of answers. The longer version of my answers provided additional advice. For aspiring data scientists of all ages, I provide here the full, unabridged version of my answers, which may help you even more to achieve your goal. (Note: I paraphrase Alex’s original questions in quotes below.)

1. “What is the number one piece of advice you give to aspiring data scientists?”

My number one piece of advice always is to follow your passions first. Know what you are good at and what you care about, and pursue that. So, you might be good at math, or programming, or data manipulation, or problem solving, or communications (data journalism), or whatever. You can do that flavor of data science within the context of any domain: scientific research, government, media communications, marketing, business, healthcare, finance, cybersecurity, law enforcement, manufacturing, transportation, or whatever. As a successful data scientist, your day can begin and end with you counting your blessings that you are living your dream by solving real-world problems with data. I saw a quote recently that summarizes this: “If you think your scarce data science skills could be better used elsewhere, be bold and make the move.” (Reference).

2. “What are the most important skills for an aspiring data scientist to acquire?”

There are many skills under the umbrella of data science, and we should not expect any one single person to be a master of them all. The best solution to the data science talent shortage is a team of data scientists. So I suggest…

(continue reading here … https://www.mapr.com/blog/definitive-qa-aspiring-data-scientists)

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