The Disappearing Data Scientist

1. THE DISAPPEARING DATA SCIENTIST BY KURT CAGLE MANAGING EDITOR DATA SCIENCE CENTRAL

2. THESIS: THE DATA SCIENTIST IS GOING AWAY. INSTEAD, DATA LITERACY IS BECOMING CRITICAL •

As Organizations Continue To Become Data Focused, Dedicated Data Scientists Are • Fading Away Even As Many Professions Require Proficiency In Data Technologies.

3. DATA SCIENCE HAS BEEN AROUND FOR AWHILE •

Actuaries, Statisticians, Analysts … These Were All Proto-Data Scientists. • Most Were Also Subject Matters Who Used These Tools For Domain Research.

4. EVEN THE TOOLS OF DATA SCIENCE ARE COMPARATIVELY OLD •

Fortran, SAS, SRSS, MATLAB, Mathematica and Many Others Have Been Used For Statistical Analysis For Decades

5. DATA SCIENTISTS EMERGED AS A SEPARATE DISCIPLINE AROUND 2012

Big Data Spurred Big Analysis, Mostly In Building Statistical Models. R and Later Python Ruled the Roost As Data Scientists

6. MACHINE LEARNING INVOLVED THE USE OF NEURAL NETWORKS TO “TEACH” MODELS •

Neural Networks Applied to Categorization, Image Recognition, NLP • Single Actions and Command Lines Gave Way to Rich User Interfaces

7. DATA SCIENTISTS WENT FROM INDIVIDUALS TO TEAMS BY THE EARLY 2020S •

Data Engineers to Analysts to Visualizers to Storytellers to Strategists to Ethicists. • The Focus In Organizations Shifted From Analysis To Model Building as Software

8. DATA SCIENTISTS ARE DISPERSING INTO SPECIALISTS, SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS, GOVERNORS AND CHAMPIONS •

As Organizations Become Data-Centric, the Lone Data Scientists Are Being Replaced by Subject Matter Experts Who Are Trained With Data Science Tools, and Data Competency is Increasingly Expected of Managers and Decision Makers.

9. THE FUTURE: AUGMENTED INTELLIGENCE, NOT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE •

AI has transform Augmented Intelligence, using Data Science Tools To Inform, Automate and Operationalize Data-Driven Decision Making. • Moreover, basically probably the most worthwhile AI initiatives have human throughout the loops, on account of perception and ethics keep (and must be) troublesome to automate.

10. CAREER STRATEGIES IN THE DATA FUTURE •

Data Literacy – the Understanding of Data Analytics, Augmented Intelligence and Models As Software – Should Inform Decisions About Education and Career Planning. • Don’t Become a Data Scientist, Become a Data Literate Subject Matter Expert or Decision Maker

Hosted at The Disappearing Data Scientist from Kurt Cagle