There is a famous diagram
that goes out you know that data science is
a mixture of three things, domain
knowledge, programming, and mathematics.
Today we have Siddharth who is currently a
senior data scientist at Target and he will
soon be joining K-Mart Australia as a senior
data scientist and also setting up that data
a science team in India for them.
Welcome Siddharth, it’s a pleasure to have
you.
So Siddharth having been at Target for 6.5
years now and having been a practicing data
scientist for so many years, what according
to you is data science?
And what would
make someone successful in the field of data
science if they are looking to enter into
this field?
Very good question Prashant and you know,
at Springboard to all my mentees I have
told this when they ask me what is data science
and one of my mentees asked me how
can I be successful in data science?
I told him see, don’t look at data science
just as a
collection of some tools and some mathematical
techniques.
There is a famous diagram
that goes out you know that data science is
a mixture of three things, domain
knowledge, programming, and mathematics.
But yes, this is there, everyone
has that there are many data scientist out
there who have the skills but why they are
not successful because most of them they miss
one thing that is the skill of thinking,
critical thinking.
I mean apart from these three things if I
want to tell one thing that can
differentiate between a good data scientist
and bad data scientist and an average data
scientist is the skill of critical thinking,
thinking with your data and to all my mentees
I
say before doing anything, before you even
write a program, think of implementing a
model or fitting a model to a data, think,
ask these two questions, why..why.. why and
so what!
These two questions, why and so what.
So one of my mentees, he was giving
this test at Springboard Data Science Career
Track Prep Test.
So the first time he kind of could not make
it
through, he could not pass all the tests and
then he came to me.
I said, did you apply
this framework of why, so what and then started
coding?
And did you break the
problem into components?
Then he said no sir, I didn’t do it.
I said, next time when you
take the test, do it!
I explained to him, see, if you always ask
yourself why I am solving
this problem, what is the pain point here
and if I solve this problem, so what!
How is a
user going to benefit from it?
If you ask these questions and get answers
to yourself
right, in the bigger canvas you know where
in the bigger picture your solution is going
to
fit and how can we integrate it to the main
picture you know, the larger picture.
And
that mentee came to me, like I told this him
on Sunday, on Wednesday he send a mail
and say sir I have passed the test, thank
you so much.
Your thing of before writing a
code ask why and so what has helped me a lot.
So, in order to become successful, I
would say the most important thing a data
scientist should have, along with all these
set
of tools and technique is thinking, thinking
with your data, critical thinking.
Asking this
why and so what often.
When you are in a meeting, you should not
take orders, I mean
data scientists are not supposed to be waiters,
they don’t take orders, they are the think
tanks, they are supposed to be think tank
because companies depend on them.
They
say something, companies say, okay they must
have thought about it.
So you know, you
should be owning your decision.
So that comes only when you are thinking about
that.
