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What Skills Should Aspiring Data Scientists Develop?

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Nithya V
What Skills Should Aspiring Data Scientists Develop?

Data science is one the most popular careers sought after by people in the IT sector. Data scientists are some of the highest paid professionals in this sector and becoming a data scientist requires the need for some important skills in different areas.

Data scientists need to be highly educated. Most of the data scientists hired by IT companies have a master’s degree while around 46% of the data scientists have PhDs. This shows that one needs a fairly strong educational background in order to acquire knowledge to become a data scientist.

Data scientists are also required to have good programming skills, especially in languages like Python and R. R is a programming language that is specific to data science requirements and it is vital that a data scientist masters the language. Many online and offline courses can help one grasp this programming language. Most data scientists utilize R for solving the statistical problems encountered in data science.You can learn these skills here

Python is one of the most common programming languages required for data science along with Perl, C, C++ or Java. Python is most preferred by data scientists due to its versatility and ease of coding when compared to other programming languages. It can take in various different data formats and allows the data scientist to import SQL tables with ease into the code. Python also allows for the creation of data sets and thus it is an important skill required by a data scientist.

Another important skill required is experience with Pig or Hive which is not necessary but is very advantageous. Having knowledge of cloud tools like Amazon S is also beneficial as well as knowledge of Hadoop and utilizing it for data filtration, data exploration, summarization and data sampling. It is also used for quickly conveying data to various system points.

Data scientists also need to be proficient in SQL or Structured Query Language which helps in operations like adding, deleting and extracting data from any database. It helps in carrying out various analytical functions and also in transforming structures of databases. SQL is an important skill for a data scientist as it is specifically made for helping with access, communication and working of data.

Having a good amount of knowledge in Apache Spark is also helpful and helps boost one’s career in the data science field. It is specifically designed for helping run algorithms at a faster pace and helps the data scientist deal with large amounts of data easily. It also helps them in preventing the loss of any data.

Another advantageous skill for data scientists is being proficient in areas like machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence or AI. The topics included under this are adversarial learning, reinforcement learning, neural networks, etc. Having knowledge of various techniques involved in machine learning such as logistic regression, supervised machine learning, decision trees, etc. can help you get an edge over other data scientists and will definitely help boost your career.

Data visualization is also an important skill required by data scientists that helps make data and information easier to understand. It helps data scientists to work with data directly and visualize its impacts and understand its implications better. A data scientist should also be able to work with various different unstructured data which may not fit in the database tables. This includes blog posts, reviews by consumers, videos, social media posts, etc. A data scientist must have the skill to properly analyze and also manipulate unstructured data in various different platforms. These skills are extremely necessary for anyone who wishes to become a successful data scientist in the future.

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Nithya V
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