Data scientists are in demand as never before, and if you have the skills in advanced analytics, big data, machine learning, and project management, you can pretty much write your own ticket. Even better, those with skills in computer science, statistics, business intelligence, and any of the other disciplines that underlie data science can, with additional education in key topics, find work as data scientists. Getting Into Data Science: Tools and Techniques for Professional Success shows you how.
Data scientists help companies navigate in a business world in which data now rules and those who can find it, extract it, shape it, and make profitable use of it gain sizable advantages over competitors. Given the speed of technological change, companies in all industries need help more than ever before to create value from the mountains of data their organizations generate. They need data scientists. In this book, author William Ford, a data scientist himself, shows that data scientists, like professionals in other transformational periods, are indispensable change agents that help organizations solve immediate problems, manage challenges, and bridge the gap into new fields of economic opportunity.
But there's a catch. you need to develop the chops to call yourself a data scientist credibly. You need the hard skills related to data science, including skills in computer science, math, machine learning, statistics, and more. You also need some soft skills, like the ability to convey ideas, lead a project team, and coach other people. Those going out on their own to consult also also need business skills--like the ability to market yourself or identify a strategic point of leverage that a project can exploit.Getting into Data Science strives to help budding data scientists understand which skills they need to master to position themselves in roles that help organizations thrive in our data-driven world. This book shows you: The skills and education required for success as a data scientist
The tools and methods data scientists use to solve problems, prototype analytic variables, and find opportunities in data sets
How to develop the project management, organizational, and "soft" skills data scientists need to prosper whether working as an employee or as a consultant
How to help your organization or consulting clients become data driven on a project-by-project basis
This book will help you develop the essential career skills required to enter the exciting field of data science whether you want to work for a leading tech company or startup, or choose to work as a consultant in some capacity. In short, this book will outline how to become upwardly mobile as a data scientist. For those with the right skills, the time to move into this field is now--while the data science fire is hot.
About the Author: Will Ford is the lead data scientist at Alpine Data Labs. He started his career more than a decade ago in the Biomedical group at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and went on to earn a PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology before moving to the Bay Area to work as a big data science consultant. Ford has worked in data science as an independent consultant, a consultant with a large firm, and currently as a consultant with a small startup. He has experience teaching audiences from the high school to graduate level. He has taught courses in math, programming, neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and data science.
