Opinion: Data Science as a Future (DSaaF)

Premise

Data science is the current hotness in the IT industry with everyone talking about machine learning, artificial intelligence, and self-driving cars to name a few. Is the hype warranted? Are the people who fear that AI will take over the world, correct? And the real question I seek to answer is, should a software developer/engineer invest in the skills needed for a career in data science?

Data science itself casts a large net over many subjects in academia. It is rare to find someone who has all the skills that data science entails because many of the subjects are disparate. In my eyes, data science is a combination of computer science, statistics, and probability at its core; but the many applications of data science call for skills in other subjects like linguistics, finance, biology, chemistry, and physics. Communication skills are also a key aspect of a data scientist and cannot be underestimated.

As a software developer, I am beginning to see the possibilities of data science and in particular, machine learning. I do believe that data science is going to play a big role in our future, but not without some obstacles. Data science would be useless without data, and we need to be conscious of how we obtain that data to solve the questions we need answering.

Data Gathering

Gathering data is a critical piece that needs to be wrapped in rigor and careful planning. At this point in time there is no shortage of storage for data, and computing power is easier and cheaper to come by everyday to process the data.

Who will be responsible to gather data in a responsible and accountable fashion? Nowadays, it would likely be private corporations (who may not share the data for free) or government organizations (who may use the data for their own purposes and optionally make it freely available). The fact that data gathering is not trivial means that there should be sufficient jobs in the field in the future.

For data science to benefit the most people, I feel that the data sets should be as open as possible. This way, the most amount of data scientists have access and can draw useful conclusions from their analysis.

The Future

I do believe data science is going to play a big role in our future, and with the high skill barrier to entry, there will likely be a shortage of people to fill these roles. Anytime there is a shortage of supply and high demand, that implies a high price for these human resources (putting my economics background to work). Software developers and engineers should take advantage of their skills to bridge the short gap between a computer scientist and a data scientist.

What if someone has success in computer science but not data science?
Data scientists alone cannot manage a complex data pipeline on their own. They would still require the help from data engineers to build the resources required to conduct data analysis and machine learning on a large scale. As cloud services become better each year, this need will diminish somewhat, but I feel that there will be a shortage of data engineers as well in the future.

Conclusion

Data science is already here and the future is now. If you have the time and/or the skills to make the jump, then get on this train because it is moving fast!
I know I’ll be…