Can Someone Develop the Data Science Mindset without Having to Be in the Field for Several Years?8/13/2017 Short answer: yes. Longer answer: definitely, as long as they make a conscious effort to cultivate the necessary parts of this mindset and integrate them into a functional whole. Easier said than done, right? Perhaps. Maybe that’s why some companies ask for someone that has 15+ years of experience in the field, even if the field didn't exist 15 years ago! What they may really be asking is for someone who knows what this field entails and knows how to make things happen, using the corresponding methodologies. So, the question that naturally arises is “how can someone get this understanding of the field without having to spend a large part of their career in it?” There are several strategies to accomplish that, none of which are easy or something that you can learn in a bootcamp. Even really good data science courses, may not be sufficient for this purpose. The reason is that the mindset of a data scientist is very diverse and not something you can put into a syllabus. There is a reason why the brightest data science practitioners seek a mentor, or some kind of personal learning experience, in order to gain some kind of mastering of the craft. Yet, as I’ve explained in the Mentoring in Data Science video, the mentor is not there to answer all your questions, even if he could answer most of them. The role of the mentor is to help you become your own mentor eventually. Of course there are exceptional people out there that don’t require a mentor, since they know everything they need to know, or they have the resources and resourcefulness to obtain this knowledge on their own. When I meet one such person I’ll be sure to blog about them! Apart from being part of a mentorship, you can learn about the mindset of the data scientist by practicing science, in a data analytics setting. This is quite different from taking this or the other tool, applying it, and then creating some insightful visuals from the results. Practicing science also involves conducting experiments, asking deep questions, and challenging yourself and what you know. It’s realizing that all scientific theories are disprovable and not taking anything as gospel, since you are secure in the knowledge that everything in science is in flux. The only thing that’s perhaps immune to this constant change, is the mindset, the essence of the role of the data scientist. One robust way to attain this understanding is to strip away all the transient aspects of the role, one by one, through scientific research. In other words, you need to become the craft, rather than merely practice it like a technician of sorts. In my latest book I underline several aspects of the data science craft that I’ve found, through both experience and research. They are relevant and useful for bringing about the data science mindset in someone. Of course, it is next to impossible to cover all the angles in a single book, but it is a good start. Applicable to all levels of data science practitioners, this book can at the very least make you fascinated about data science and motivate you to learn more about it, without getting consumed by the techniques or the aspects of it that are more in vogue these days (e.g. artificial intelligence). After all, just like everything else in science, data science is more of a process than anything else. It’s up to you to make it an insightful and intriguing one...
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Zacharias Voulgaris, PhDPassionate data scientist with a foxy approach to technology, particularly related to A.I. Archives
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