Definition:
A data scientist is an individual who performs statistical analysis, data mining and data retrieval processes, handling large volume quantities, to identify trends and information relevant to a company.
A data scientist performs data analysis with information stored in data warehouses or data centers, in order to solve a variety of business problems, optimize performance, and gather business intelligence insights.
Roles of Data Scientists
Data scientists generally analyze large volumes of data. They are always equipped with statistical models and analyze the past together with the current data stored to get recommendations and suggestions for optimal decision making in a business.
These scientists are a fundamental part of the marketing and planning process to identify useful information and obtain statistical data for the planning, execution and monitoring of results-oriented marketing strategies.
Acceptance of the term data scientist
The name data scientist is sometimes belittled because it lacks specificity and can be perceived as an aggrandized word referring to the data analyst. In any case, the position is gaining acceptance with large companies that are interested in obtaining meaning from large volumes of data, because of the voluminous amount of structured, unstructured and semi-structured data that a large company produces.
A data scientist possesses a combination of knowledge of analytics, machine learning, data mining, and statistical knowledge, as well as experience with algorithms and coding. Perhaps the most important skill a data scientist possesses, however, is the ability to explain the importance of data in a way that can be easily understood by others.