WhatsTheBigData

1. Alexander D’yakonov

An academic in the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics department at Moscow State University, Alexander modestly describes his favorite problem-solving technique as “luck.” Despite this, the 33-year-old Russian has earned a reputation for using methods known for their theoretical rigor and elegant simplicity. This helped him to win the dunnhumby Shopper Challenge, which asked competitors to predict the amount and timing of supermarket shoppers’ next spends. Continue reading →

Data science is the defining specialty of the business of big data and an emerging career path for those who love to find new insights in the gazillion bytes of data created each day. It’s where you find fierce competition for talent, the jobs of the future, new training programs and courses, new ventures, and new products. But where to find the data science-relevant online conversations with the most impact?  Continue reading →

“Businesses now looking for talent with deep analytical and statistical backgrounds include big publishers, portals, ad networks, and e-commerce sites – just about any company that possesses massive amounts of data. Salaries range from $75,000 to $100,000 for someone starting out with strong analytical skills and background to as much as $150,000 to $300,000 for experienced professionals.”–“Wanted: Data Scientist With a Human Touch”

“[Former Vertica CEO] Lynch told his staff during the February meeting that he has no intention of retiring. Indeed, he pledged to his staff that he would assist in starting-up or otherwise supporting no less than 20 Big Data start-ups in the Boston area over the next five years.”–“HP Lead Big Data Exec Chris Lynch Resigns”

“This is the time to be super aggressive.”–Chris Lynch

“As the amount of data in the world grows, the only certainty is that there will need to be more qualified peopled to make sense of it. That should be good news as we stop and salute our machine overlords.”–“The Age of Big Data”

From Simon Rogers, “What is a Data Scientist?”:

“Someone who can bridge the raw data and the analysis – and make it accessible. It’s a democratising role; by bringing the data to the people, you make the world just a little bit better.”–Simon Rogers

“A data scientist is that unique blend of skills that can both unlock the insights of data and tell a fantastic story via the data.”–DJ Patil

“A data scientist is someone who blends, math, algorithms, and an understanding of human behavior with the ability to hack systems together to get answers to interesting human questions from data.”–Hilary Mason

“A data scientist is a rare hybrid, a computer scientist with the programming abilities to build software to scrape, combine, and manage data from a variety of sources and a statistican who knows how to derive insights from the information within. S/he combines the skills to create new protoypes with the creativity and thoroughness to ask and answer the deepest questions about the data and what secrets it holds”–Jake Porway

“The four qualities of a great data scientist are creativity, tenacity, curiosity, and deep technical skills. They use skills in data gathering and data munging, visualization, machine learning, and computer programming to make data driven decisions and data driven products. They prefer to let the data do the talking.”–Jeremy Howard

“By definition all scientists are data scientists. In my opinion, they are half hacker, half analyst, they use data to build products and find insights. It’s Columbus meet Columbo – starry eyed explorers and skeptical detectives.”–Monica Rogati