Data_Scientists_at_Work

Data is the new oil! By 2018, the United States will experience a shortage of 190,000 skilled data scientists, and 1.5 million managers and analysts capable of reaping actionable insights from the big data deluge. —McKinsey Report2 The emergence of data science is gathering ever more attention, and it’s no secret that the term data science itself is loaded with controversy about what it means and whether it’s actually a eld. In Data Scientists at Work, I interview sixteen data scientists across sixteen different industries to understand both how they think about it theoretically and also very practically what problems they’re solving, how data’s helping, and what it takes to be successful. Mirroring the ux in which data science nds itself, the sample of data scientists polled in this book are all over the map about the signi cance and utility of the terms data science to refer to a coherent discipline and data scientist to refer to a well-de ned occupation. In the interests of full disclosure, I fall into the camp of those who believe that data science is truly an emerging academic discipline and that data scientists as such have proper roles in organizations. Moreover, I believe that each of the subjects I interviewed for this book is indeed a data scientist—and, after having spent time with all of them, I couldn’t be more excited about the future of data science.