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The lastest stories and analysis on the Economist job market

Data Scientist, Data Miner, Statistician or all of the above?

It was not so long ago that Steve Lohr quoted economist Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google at the time, as saying “ that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians.” Lohr spoke of a “new breed of statisticians (…) that use powerful computers and sophisticated mathematical models to hunt for meaningful patterns and insights in vast troves of data. The applications are as diverse as improving Internet search and online advertising, ...

When story-telling is censorship: How independent is your research?

“Into the woods you have to grope, but that’s the way you learn to cope. “Into the woods to find there’s hope of getting through the journey.” So sing the Baker, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack (of the beanstalk fame) in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Sondheim himself was caught up in a brief independence and censorship controversy over whether or not Disney wanted to exclude a decidedly 18+ rated encounter between Cinderella’s P...

The job description-reality gap

We left our heroes, Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak, trying to get a good price for their sheep at careers fair. This week’s analogy is another market, the oriental bazaar stall that is the job description. You can browse without any commitment and see if something takes your fancy, though you may be hassled by hawkers of sponsored links along the way. Some stalls are stuffed with boxes and illuminous yellow star-shaped hand-scrawled price tag...

Conference utility-maximisation

This next slide shows the two research questions I sought to answer in my PhD. Students scored on average 4.26, which is between 4 and 5. What’s really interesting about this chart is that… I have copies of the full report here if anyone would like one. No? Please take one! I don’t want to have to carry them back with me on the plane. Tea or coffee? Where are you from? It’s academic conference season, that small window between when the students f...

How to Clean Up Your Online Presence and Make a Great First Impression

Odds are someone is searching the web for you right now, or at least has looked you up fairly recently. Do you know what they learned? Better yet, do you control the pages and profiles they visited? If not, it's time to take your online reputation into your own hands instead of leaving it to Google. Here's how. Why First Impressions Matter on the Internet It's no secret that friends, nosy family members, and potential employers will all take ...

Master's Degree in Data Science

Pioneer schools venturing into graduate and undergraduate data science degrees or modifying existing statistics curricula are setting the trends on what a company may require and that effort will end up making the job descriptions clearer. And they are doing so at high speed. Graduate programs started mushrooming after Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil cheerfully reiterated in a 2012 Harvard Business Review article that the sexiest job of the 21...

So You Want to Be a Data Scientist?

Okay, I admit it: I read Secret. One post that literally made me laugh out loud recently said, "A data scientist is a data analyst who lives in Silicon Valley." (The others are unprintable; sorry). That comment gets to the heart of the confusion surrounding big data and data science, And it is a strong signal of a disruptive trend: it makes us uncomfortable, and it makes us question whether we're focused on the right things. A similar dynamic led...

Rise of the Data Scientist

In the movie The Matrix, Tank is the skilled operator who stays in the ship , staring at the console all day and guiding Neo and the crew safely through the virtual world of the matrix: entry points, exit paths, dangers, and risks. While we see green binary trails, he sees the answers and insights. In our world of marketing technology, the data scientist can look at marketing and sales data and see the correlations, connections, and causations. D...

Self Evaluation – Making the Right Decision to Becoming a Data Scientist

Self Evaluation – Making the Right Decision to Be a Data Scientist The Data Scientist, Data Manager, Statistician and Data Analyst are the most popular career paths. Now, top universities have introduced courses in Data Science, due to the popularity of jobs in this field. People are drawn to the data scientist profession without analysing the responsibilities of the job, positive attitude, business and technical skills. Those who simply jump int...

Essentials to Move Forward with Career Trajectory of Data Scientist

Data Science is a growing industry and various organizations are looking to recruit experienced individuals from around the world. Data science is an emerging field and there are many branches of it, producing different job titles. Some of the job titles include Data Engineers, Data Scientists, Statisticians and Data Architects. However, many of the job seekers are not aware, what is the job description for any title and the relevant organisation...

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