Understanding Data Science - Buzzword of the decade

In high demand, Data Science seems to have become the buzzword of the decade. It is offered as a STEM degree in USA. Data Science is a discipline that involves the extraction, preparation, analysis, visualization, and maintenance of information. It is a cross-disciplinary field as it stems from mathematics, statistics and computer science. With the massive increase in data, there is a pressing need to analyze such a large volume of data. With Data Science, you have the ability to not just manage such a large volume but also develop machine learning models that predict future outcomes. These machine learning models are beneficial for forecasting business growth and analyzing future outcomes.

Masters of Science in Data Science
An MS in USA is of 2 years duration. Applicants should have a bachelors degree in a quantitative field like Mathematics, statistics, Computer Science or related. A good GRE score and English language proficiency is also required for most of the universities.
Data Science is an umbrella term that incorporates all the domains that involve data to be processed in some or the other form. A Data Scientist deals with not only the analysis of data but also developing predictive models that use machine learning algorithms to find the outcome of events- using statistics and programming. The role of a data scientist is not only limited to business but also various other domains like health, manufacturing, finance, and transportation.

Curriculum, major courses while pursuing MS in Data Science
The core programs taught in most of the universities offering Masters in Data Science in US:
Statistics
Data Mining
Software Development
Data Optimization
Machine Learning
Data Mining
Business Intelligence from Big Data
Data Analysis & Visualization
Probability & Statistics
Statistical Inference & Modelling

Thorough with statistics and important mathematical concepts
Experienced with tools like Python, R, SAS etc.
Expertise to deal with both structured and unstructured data
Well versed with SQL (MySQL, Oracle PL/SQL), NoSQL (Cassandra, Redis)
Knowledge of Machine Learning algorithms
Big Data tools like Apache Hadoop, Mahout, and Spark
TensorFlow

Currently, there is a dearth of data science roles. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that there will be 11.5 million jobs in data science by 2026. This number is likely to go up, as more businesses and processes went online during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of the Job titles related to data science are –
• Data Scientist
• Data Architect
• Data Administrator
• Business Analyst
• Data Analyst
• Business Intelligence Manager
• Data/Analytics Manager

Responsibilities of a Data Scientist
Data pre processing - involving data cleaning and data transformation. Developing predictive models to forecast outcome of future events based on historical data Fine-tuning the machine learning models and optimizing their performances Asking new questions to problems that need to be solved to make better decisions Good communication and team work skills