August 7, 2019 Becoming a Data Scientist

A hidden gem in industry trends – one that is on the rise.

August 2, 2019

While everyone is thinking of how to become the next best programmer, start their online business or invest into cryptocurrency, there is one trend that is steadily on the rise, that not many people talk about. This is the trend of becoming a data scientist.

A bit of data

According to Google Trends, the field of study for Data Science has been on the rise for the last 5 years worldwide. The biggest interest in this field comes from China, but that might be because of their abundance of inhabitants. This rising trend is not surprising, what’s surprising is that only a few people talk about it. The most probable reason – other buzzing topics like bitcoin prices, AI, web, game, and software development are taking the light. Which is quite funny, as you couldn’t have AI without data science, but people tend to forget the latter field more often.

Data science is also a profitable field: according to Ziprecruiter, the average annual data scientist’s salary can vary from $69,000 to $162,000. The salary varies because of experience – the more experienced you are, the bigger salary you can get.

What becoming a data scientist means?

The best thing about data science is that a lot of people are coming to it from different fields. Which means that they can offer a unique point of view when analyzing data. These people are increasingly welcomed to an abundance of fields: business, IT, medicine, etc. Why? Because data scientists with unique industry knowledge are able to find possible areas for improvement faster than data scientists who are narrow in their field.

Being a data scientist, means you have to always be on your toes: look at the presented data of the industry and analyze it. You will not get specific questions as data analyst does, a data scientist has to first find what criteria they want to analyze, filter the appropriate data, and then get results. A big part of a data scientist’s job is automating the whole process – data collection, extraction, and analysis. That’s why sometimes it’s confused with machine learning, but that is only a part of the data science field.

If you are thinking of switching to this field, there are multiple solutions for how. One of the best ways is to select a learning path and finish it. For example, BitDegree’s data science learning path offers an extensive list of courses: you will find out not only how to visualize the data, but also get machine learning basics. This will help you to get your fundamentals while on the lookout for new trends.

Possible prospects

For those who have decided on becoming a data scientist, or those who already are, we provide possible future trends for this field:

• Increased attention to data privacy. A lot of consumers are starting to request their data back and are taking a higher interest in privacy. This means, that it might get harder to participate in machine learning algorithm projects, especially if they use user-generated data, such as search queries.
• Moving towards AI. Machine learning is only a small step towards AI and you can be sure that people are still going to look for people who can help develop artificial intelligence.
• Blockchain. It’s not only cryptocurrency, but the ability to add security to voting, shopping, and even education. Data scientists are extremely welcome in this field.
• Consumer analytics and marketing. Every business wants to be the best and bring the biggest profit. That’s why they are also turning to data scientists (especially to those who became data scientists as a second career choice) to help them find the areas for improvement.

Keep an eye on these trends as you study, as they might become the area you work in.

Becoming a data scientist is a smart choice. Of course, it’s not as popular, as becoming a programmer and maybe less known, but the possibilities are endless: you can work in any field you want, be on top of the latest trends and get a respectable salary. It is truly the hidden gem of industry trends.

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