(I will give you a hint. It’s in the name.)
Scientists!
This post is intended as a response to an interesting discussion on LinkedIn started by analytics manager at Ford, Michael Cavaretta. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michael-cavaretta-ph-d-795a965_indus.... He asked what hires make the best data scientists.
In my real-world experience in the data science field, I find that physicists make the best data scientists. Why? Because physicists work at the intersection of math and reality. They have been trained to hypothesize ideas about how things work, and then to design experiments to test these hypothesizes, gather the data, interpret it, and communicate the results. This is mainly what we are asking data scientists to do. (I do not believe model building is the sole role of data scientists, but that’s for another post.) Physicists can also work independently and can learn new techniques on their own.
While I specifically call out physicists from my experience, all physical scientists, chemists, astrophysicists, and even (sometimes) biologists should have the same skill sets and expertise. Physical scientists perform the best when you have a lot of data and you do not know what to do with it. They are good with uncertainty and can propose hypotheses to move analyses forward when working in a vacuum.
This doesn’t mean you cannot hire individuals with different educational backgrounds. Here are some cases when it would be a good idea to hire:
What background do you think makes for the best data scientist? Let me know in the comments below.
Posted 1 March 2021
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