Data Analyst Vs Data Scientist
Data Analysts and Data Scientists are two popularly known roles in the field of Data Science. Now, let us understand what are these roles and what are their primary responsibilities. While many industries may have some or more overlap among the responsibilities handled by these two roles, let us look at their key responsibilities and skills.
Data Analysts:
Data analysts work on structured data to analyze and solve the business problem
Data analysts work on data collection and cleaning to remove outliers, manage missing data and convert data types to their target formats if needed.
Data analysts can also introduce new features in the data which might help in better understanding of data by the business stakeholders (for example Body Mass Index, Financial ratios, etc.).
Data analysts use tools like SQL, Python, or R to prepare and clean the data.
Data analysts create various types of visualizations using various graphics libraries such as matplotlib, seaborn in Python, or ggplot2 in R and/or Business Intelligence Tools such as Power BI/Tableau / SAP Business Objects / SAS Business Intelligence Tools/ Power BI, etc.
Data analysts create reports which are easily understood by anyone and can result in actionable insights from the reports.
Data analysts detect the trends and patterns in the data which can be used to derive meaningful insights.
The most common skills possessed by the Data Analysts are described below:
Programming and Querying languages (Python / R/ SQL).
Knowledge of Probability and Statistics.
Microsoft Excel Advanced skills.
Data Visualization skills using graphics libraries in Python / R / Power BI / Tableau / SAS Business Intelligence / etc.
Data wrangling and Exploratory Data Analysis to derive insights from the data.
Report writing and presentation skills.
Storytelling skills and extremely good communication skills.
Business knowledge and a good understanding of the process/products/offerings for the customer.
Analytical thinking and data understanding skills.
Data Scientists
Data Scientists work on structured data to analyze data, build predictive models and solve business problems by providing insights from the data and building models that can answer the different what-if scenarios and forecast the future outcomes.
Data scientists work on gathering, cleaning, and exploring data like Data analysts using tools such as R / Python / SQL, etc.
Data scientists also look for trends and patterns in data. and which can give you more insights to derive at possible actions.
Data scientists perform extensive data mining to discover more trends/patterns and present interesting dashboards.
They come up with new predictive models using various machine learning techniques which will answer the question “What will happen in the future?”
They also collaborate with various stakeholders in the organization including data analysts.
They build intelligent dashboards powered by various Data visualization tools and publish reports.
Sometimes, they also improve the processes by developing automation scripts to automate some parts of the data science activities.
Data scientists also work on enhancing/recalibrating models for unseen data so that the models are relevant and can be trusted.
The most common skills that should be possessed by a Data Scientist are as follows:
Programming and Querying languages (Python / R/ SQL, Advanced Object-oriented Programming)
Knowledge of Probability and Advanced Statistics.
Microsoft Excel Advanced skills.
Data Visualization skills using graphics libraries in Python / R / Power BI / Tableau / SAS Business Intelligence / etc.
Data wrangling and Exploratory Data Analysis to derive insights from the data.
Knowledge/skills on Hadoop, MySQL, Apache SPARK, TensorFlow, etc.
Report writing and presentation skills.
Storytelling skills and extremely good communication skills.
Business knowledge and a good understanding of the process/products/offerings for the customer.
Predictive modeling / Forecasting skills using Machine learning / AI algorithms.
Analytical thinking and creativity in solving business problems using data.
You can also read the following article on The Top 8 Skills for a Data Science Managers here.
To summarize, you have seen in this article, a primary difference between Data Analyst Vs Data Scientist Roles in the field of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
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