I know they code and use statistical models on a lot of data to make conclusions or improve the models, but what do they do? What do they spend most of their time on? What do they rarely do?
I am thinking about getting a master’s in Data Science, but I am overwhelmed by all the tasks it involves. I am trying to understand what a data scientist’s daily work is like and if it would interest me.
It depends on your workplace and the objectives you have for the company. In my situation (more of a consultancy organization), it’s creating proofs of concept for a range of issues to present to possible customers. This entails utilizing extremely soiled data to produce solutions that will “pass” for respectable Proofs of Concept, with additional development and improvement carried out just once clients are sufficiently impressed to cover the costs.
It basically involves a lot of Googling to discover new approaches to a given problem, followed by a cycle of trial and error until a decent answer is found.
This is what I did yesterday as a data scientist, I started by arriving at the office at 10:00 AM. I checked my emails and found none that required my attention. Then, I reviewed the results of some overnight jobs, which were unusual and didn’t match my expectations. I spent some time trying to understand why this happened.
Later, I had a call with a sales representative about an algorithm in production. I also exchanged emails with a data engineer to clarify a question the salesperson had that I couldn’t answer. Additionally, I had a brief conversation with a project manager via Slack to organize an architecture workshop with engineers for another algorithm we’re trying to deploy.
In the afternoon, I focused on rewriting the code for the job that had gone wrong overnight. I decided it was more efficient to try a different approach rather than continuing to troubleshoot the issue. I left the office at 6:30 PM.
@Nicholas I have a Data Scientist 3 role, where I generate monthly reports using Excel and Python, present them in PowerPoint, answer system questions, fetch data, and test projects. My teammate, a Data Scientist/Consultant, focuses on predictive modeling and advanced statistics, which I’m not familiar with. Since I only know basic statistics, I often struggle to understand the complex terms he uses.
Hi, Nicholas. A data scientist must possess both production-level software engineering and data science expertise.