Data Science Venn Diagram - From Good to Great

During one of the facilitation session for IDA Data Science MOOC Initiative, I came across Drew Conway's Venn Diagram on the meaning of Data Science. I have a different version that is adapted from him and have written it in my blog post here.

After much thought and looking at the recent post from Andrew Ng with regards to setting up his Data Science team in Baidu Research, I asked myself the question how can a good data scientist move to being a great data scientist. One thing that came to my mind is that for anyone working in Data Science, they cannot run away from being part of a team. They have to learn how to be a good leader and also what is required to be a good follower as well. To be both a good leader and follower, one needs to have the soft skills or what is commonly known as people skill. Everyone plays a part in making the team effective and efficient, the leader cannot be effective without the cooperation from the team members and team members cannot be effective without the leader to give the direction, stay focus, managing the timelines and motivating the team members.

Besides that, to be a great data scientist, in my opinion, communication skills is very important. Being able to communicate the relevant insights and in a manner that is digestible by management requires much thought to be put in. The great data scientist would need to learn how people learn, what kind of communication medium is effective in bringing across the messages/insights and how to even convince/influence management to take the necessary actions required.

So to be a good data scientist, I would recommend the person to be trained and have knowledge in the following:

1) Data & IT management
2) Mathematical Modelling
3) Domain Expertise (Business)

And to move on from good to great data scientist, the fourth skill that is needed would be

4) People skills - Team Management, Communication Skills & Empathy

To conclude, the data scientist should not only have the 'hard' skills, knowledge and skills that can be picked up through books and other mediums but also need to have the 'soft' skills that can only be picked up through experience. The best thing is both of them can be picked up in parallel. So go forth and pick it up!