I received this morning, like everyone, an email from LinkedIn about 59 of your LinkedIn connections that are more popular than you. In short, it represents about 0.5% of my 10,000+ connections, and I decided to share with you those people listed at the top - the top 100, not just the top 59. This is based on profile views over the last 7 days, so it will change week after week. Also, I removed recruiters, generic VC or angel investors, and non data scientists in general (based on skill mix): it narrowed down to 25 profiles, listed below.

Interestingly, very few are females (I think only one, Monica), and of course quite a few are employed by linkedIn. Some famous people like Gregory from KDNuggets, Nate Silver or Prof. Davenport are missing. But at least, it shows a very different picture, compared with the traditional "top data scientists" lists published by journalists, and based on some mysterious mix of questionable Twitter metrics, and unfiltered data. In short, the list below provides a fresh perspective about top data science thought leaders and practitioners.

1. Bernard Marr - Best-Selling Author, Keynote Speaker and Consultant ...
2. DJ Patil - VP of Product at RelateIQ
3. Josh Bersin - Principal and Founder, Bersin by Deloitte
4. Chuck Brooks - Vice President, Client Executive for the Department ...
5. Avinash Kaushik - Author, Blogger, Digital Marketing Evangelist
6. Roman Stanek - Founder and CEO at GoodData
7. Daniel Tunkelang - Head of Query Understanding at LinkedIn
8. Joseph Sirosh - Corporate Vice President at Microsoft
9. Deepak Agarwal - Director of Engineering at LinkedIn
10. David Barton - Analytics Divisional Head at Innovation Enterprise
11. Dez Blanchfield - Strategy & Architecture, Australian Federal G...
12. John Ricci - Founder at US Angel Investors
13. Pardeep Kumar Mishra - Big Data / Hadoop Consultant
14. Vince Zhu - Graduate Student at NYU Courant Institute of Mathematic...
15. Muddu Sudhakar - VP & GM Big Data and Cloud Analytics at VMware
16. Craig Kuo-Jen Chao, PhD - BD & Data Scientist at Vpon Inc. 
17. Vincent Granville - Data Scientist, Startup Entrepreneur
18. Dan Steinberg - President at Salford Systems
19. Simon Zhang - Business Analytics Sr. Director at LinkedIn
20. Monica Rogati - VP of Data at Jawbone
21. Srikanth Velamakanni - Chief Executive Officer, Fractal Analytics
22. Shize Su - PhD Candidate at University of Virginia, Electrical and ...
23. Wolfgang Kraske - Senior Principal Consultant: Big Data Integration...
24. Venkat Viswanathan - Chairman at LatentView
25. Boumediene Hamzi - Mathematician, Researcher in Control & Dynam...

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