How to Become a Data Scientist

About Data Scientist

A data scientist is an individual who gathers and analyzes huge chunks of structured and unstructured data by combining tricks of mathematics, statistics and computer science. Data Scientists perform a less known work of analyzing, processing and modelling data and then use the result to formulate practical palms for organizations and companies. Data scientists are extremely adept in analysis who use their social sciences skills and technology to discover trends and handle data. A business poses multiple challenges and data scientists offer solutions by using industry knowledge, scepticism of existing assumptions and contextual understanding. In short, a data scientist converts unstructured and messy data from social media feeds, smart devices etc into something comprehensible. 

Eligibility to become Data Scientist

To be eligible to become a data scientist, an aspirant must have a Bachelor’s, Masters or Doctorate degree in either mathematics, statistics, business studies, finance, economics and computer science. 
Nowadays, most of the institutes are offering B.Sc/ M.Sc courses in Data Science, which is the most relevant course for becoming a Data Scientist. 

Such aspirants have an advantage over the others as they possess an understanding of one aspect of data science. Some additional skills such as knowledge of programming languages (SAS, R, Python), knowledge about visualization tools such as Tableau, Power BI etc, statistics, mathematics, excel proficiency etc can be beneficial for those who are aspiring to become a data scientist. 
 

Types of Job Roles Data Scientist

There aren't specific sub-roles or job roles in the field of Data Science. Experts in the field of Data Science get promotions as mid-level, senior-level managers or experts after attaining the necessary experience.

Employment Sectors for Data Scientists

A data scientist can easily become an asset in either of the following sectors in India - 

• Telecom
• Retail
• Insurance
• Banking & Financial Services
• Healthcare

Top Recruiting Organizations for Data Scientists

Here is a list of those organizations and companies that hire data scientists - 

• Mercedez Benz Research and Development
• J P Morgan
• Paytm
• Oracle
• BG Consultants
• PayPal
• Airtel X Labs

Pay Scale/Salary of Data Scientist

On average, a data scientist in India can earn somewhere in the range of INR 7 LPA and INR 8 LPA. Data scientists who are in the initial days of their career can bag an annual package of approximately INR 5 LPA. With an experience between 1 and 4 years, a data scientist can comfortably earn in the bracket of INR 6 LPA to INR 6.5 LPA. The salary package of a data scientist in India is determined by his/her experience in the field. A senior-level data scientist can get an annual salary package of as high as INR 17 LPA. (The salary structure mentioned above is indicative only and is subject to change unconditionally)
 

Books & Study Material to Become Data Scientist

Here is a list of those books which are a must-read for those who want to become a data scientist - 

• Think Bayes - Bayesian Statistics Made Simple by Allen B Downey
• Bayesian Methods for Hackers by Cam Davidson - Pilon
• Think Stats by Allen B Downey
• Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville
• Mining of Massive Datasets by Jure Leskovec, Anand Rajaraman, Jeff Ullman
• Understanding Machine Learning - From Theory to Algorithms by  Shai Shalev-Shwartz and Shai Ben-David
• The Elements of Statistical Learning by Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, Jerome Friedman
• Introduction to Statistical Learning by Gareth James, Daniela Witten, Trevor Hastie, and Robert Tibshirani
• Advanced R by Hadley Wickham
• R for Data Science by Garret Grolemund and Hadley Wickham
• Think Python by Allen B Downey
• Python Data Science Handbook by Jake VanderPlas

Pros of becoming a Data Scientist

Listed below are some pros of becoming a data scientist - 

• A data scientist can become a better individual as he/she has imbibed a quality of problem-solving attitude
• Data scientists help create better products which are customer friendly
• Data scientists command respect from the organisation they work for as the organisations rely on their input to offer better results to their clients
• Data scientists improve the quality of data making it comprehensible for the organisations
• A data scientist is offered a very good salary package from the early days in his/her career which keeps increasing exponentially as the years go by
• There is no shortage of positions for data scientists currently
   

Cons of becoming a Data Scientist

Here are some cons of becoming a data scientist - 

• Data scientists have to sometimes use those data which may breach the customer’s privacy
• In many cases, the data provided by the data scientists do not yield the expected results
• Data scientists from a different domain cannot offer any solution to another domain data issues
• A data scientist should be a jack of all trades but master of none