How to become a Data Scientist? – Part 2

In the Part I of this post we discussed the importance of statistics and programming skills to be an analytics professional, but more importantly, we also stated that “Analytics is not all about statistics only!”  We were also faced with a business problem for our cab business and got an excellent solution from one of the analytics professional. The solution was:

The p-Value of the Null Hypothesis that you should send maximum cabs at XYZ location in the evening, compared to the Alternative Hypothesis of you should not deploy maximum cabs at that location in the evening is higher than the level of significance of 5%, hence statistically there is no evidence to reject the Null Hypothesis

The above solution reminds us of a famous Hollywood movie, Interstellar. We need not say much about the movie, as we are sure that most of our readers might have watched it. With an IMDb rating of 8.7 and such wonderful reviews over the net, Interstellar needs hardly any introduction. But w.r.t our case, we noticed one commonality with this movie, majority of the audience appreciated the movie for amazing visuals and writing, but when asked if they understood the concept, people were either blank or tried to escape by weird answers. Thankfully, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar was just a movie with a prime motive of entertainment which it did quite well. However, for our cab business can we be happy just because our analytics professional has thrown a complicated statement filled with statistical jargons onto us? As a business owner/manager has the insights from the analytics professional helped us in any way?

Here comes the need for effective communication! Analytics is not only about analyzing the data, but it also involves communicating the results effectively to business managers. The results presented by us should be such that they serve as “Actionable Insights”. Always remember, simpler models sell easily in the market compared to complex models only because of their ease of understanding!

We would now structure the essential skills to be an analytics professional into two broad categories, Soft-Skills and Hard-Skills. Hard-Skills are something which you can acquire by through numerous trainings or free resources available on the net, or through our several upcoming posts. Soft-Skills are something where you need to work hard yourself and develop them, through practice. We would be contributing in every possible manner to hone the soft-skills of our readers and encourage our community to do the same.

We will put down the detailed Hard and Soft Skills in the Part-III of this series on Data Scientist & Business Analytics Professional: Key Skills, what it needs to be one of them?

To Summarize:

In this article we discussed the importance of communication skills, and how a model results might be quite apt but if not communicated properly serves no purpose. Stay tuned for final and Part-III article on this topic.