What Motivates a Data Scientist?

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Manu Jeevan for his Big Data Made Simple blog.  He asked me several questions:

  • How did you get into data science?
  • What exactly is enterprise data science?
  • How does Booz Allen Hamilton use data science?
  • What skills should business executives have to effectively to communicate with data scientists?
  • How is big data changing the world? (Please give us interesting examples)
  • What are your go-to tools for doing data science?
  • In your TedX talk Big Data, Small World you gave special attention to association discovery, is there a specific reason for that?
  • The Data Scientist has been called the sexiest job of the 21st century. Do you agree?
  • What advice would you give to people aspiring for a long career in data science?

All of these questions were ultimately aimed at understanding the key underlying question: “What motivates you to work in data science?” The question about enterprise data science really comes the closest to identifying what really motivates me — that is, I am exceedingly fortunate every day to be given the opportunity to work with a fantastic team of data scientists at Booz Allen Hamilton, with the mandate to explore data as a corporate asset and to exploit data science as a core capability in order to achieve more profound discoveries, to make better (data-driven) decisions, and to propel new innovations across numerous domains, industries, agencies, and organizations. My Data Science Declaration also sums up these motivating factors for me.

You can see the full scope of my answers to the above questions here: http://bigdata-madesimple.com/interview-with-leading-data-science-expert-kirk-borne/.

Follow Kirk Borne on Twitter @KirkDBorne

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