DyNAMICS
of
DATA SCIENCE: HoW CAN ALL
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DATA SCIENCE TALENT?
Introduction
Data science is a rapidly developing field,
and in some ways a relatively new and
emerging discipline. Its development out
of different disciplines, and its potential
impact on society and the economy, requires
a workforce with new skills. This section
illustrates this critical moment and outlines
our methodology for analysing how these
needs can be met in practice.
Data science as a developing discipline
Making sense of data has a long history.
Historically, the notion of finding useful patterns
has been given a variety of names such as
data mining, knowledge extraction, information
harvesting and data pattern processing. It
was performed by scientists, statisticians,
librarians, computer scientists and others
9
. for
example, in 1854, John Snow's map of cholera
cases alerted him to the cause of the cholera
outbreak. A cluster of dots located close to a
single water supply on a map changed how
we analyse and visualise data today
10
.
The term ‘data science’ emerged in the
1960s to designate a new profession that
was expected to make sense of increasingly
large stores of data. It wasn’t until the early
2000s that the first data science journal
was launched by the Committee on Data for
Science and Technology (CoDATA) of the
International Council for Science
11
.
Definitions of data science have evolved
over time, partly as a reflection of changes
in technology and data handling. In 1962,
John Tukey called for a reformation of
academic statistics, although there was
also a move to resist it. In The future of
data analysis, he pointed to the existence
of an as-yet unrecognised science, whose
subject of interest was learning from data,
or ‘data analysis’
12
. Tukey worked between
academia and industry, and provides a
notable precedent for ‘braided careers’ in
data science, working jointly at Bell Labs and
Princeton University Statistics department.
over the last 50 years, statisticians, data
analysts and computer scientists have played
a part in the invention and development of
computational environments for data analysis
13
.
A new workforce
In 2012, Harvard Business review described
the modern day data scientist as “a high
ranking professional with the training and
curiosity to make discoveries in the world of
big data”
14
. D J Patil, LinkedIn Chief Scientist
and author of Data Scientist: the sexiest job
of the 21st century, explained that the focus
of teams at LinkedIn was to work on data
applications that would have an immediate
and massive impact on the business. The
term that seemed to fit best was data
scientist: those who use data and science
to create something new.
“A lot of what we
are doing in data
science involves the
same computers,
maths, stats, data
and computationally
based research that
we have been doing
for as long as I have
been involved in
research, with the
current trendy label
for it.”
Dr James Hetherington,
Director of research
Engineering at the Alan
Turing Institute.
9.
f
ayyad
U et al. 1996
f
rom
Data Mining to Knowledge Discovery in Databases. American Association for Artificial
Intelligence 17, 37-54.
10.
rogers S. 2013 John Snow’s data journalism: the cholera map that changed the world. The Guardian. 15 March
2013. See https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/mar/15/john-snow-cholera-map (accessed 27
November
2018).
11.
In 2013, forbes technology contributor Gil Press put together a timeline which traces the evolution of the term
‘data science’ and its use, attempts to define it, and related terms. Press G. 2013 A very Short History of Data
Science. Forbes. 28 May 2013. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2013/05/28/a-very-short-history-of-data-
science/#30ad96c655cf (accessed 27 November 2018).
12.
Donoho
D.
2017
50
years
of
Data
Science.
Journal
of
Computational
and
Graphical
Statistics
26:4,
745-766.
13.
Donoho
D.
2017
50
years
of
Data
Science.
Journal
of
Computational
and
Graphical
Statistics
26:4,
745-766.
14.
Davenport T and Pail DJ. 2012 Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century. Harvard Business Review.
october 2012. See https://hbr.org/2012/10/data-scientist-the-sexiest-job-of-the-21st-century (accessed 27
November
2018).