Hey Fellas,

That title is one to ponder upon. Believe me!

It’s easy to say that just choose a certain IT field and go behind it. But no no no no, that’s one difficult and mind numbing task guys. It took me so much of time to decide a right path for myself.

I’m a B.tech. student and all my B.tech. friends are doing something or the other. Someone is into Android, some into web designing, a bunch like Django, some are into data science and some are just wondering till now. Well, seeing everyone doing different things confuses you. But don’t fall in that heroes. My sole advice will be to follow this simple shopping tip:

TRY EVERYTHING BUT BUY WHAT YOU LIKE.

That’s right my friends, read about everything, know about them and then decide if you wanna do it, or not.

This article is for the ones who lean a bit towards data science. So let’s answer the question “Am I a Data Scientist Material ?” step by step:

STEP 1:

WHAT IS DATA SCIENCE?

Well, Wikipedia defines Data Science as:

Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from data in various forms, both structured and unstructured, similar to data mining.

Didn’t get a thing? Me too. xD

Let me simplify, Data Science is a field of technology in which you study, collect and understand data to use the behavior of that data into something productive.

The simplest example would be of political parties and how they use data science to attract more and more number of voters.

They simply collect the data and extract information about a certain region. For example, what’s the number of women voters in an area, or how many young voters are there in a certain region. And according to this data, they implement their election tactics.

Data science is as simple as that and can be a lot more complicated.

Now, you cannot be a data-scientist using your mere programming skills. It takes a lot more than that. And if you fear mathematics, then Woah! It’s going to be difficult. You’ve got to love statistics, calculus and algebra to the very core.

Besides that, you need a business mind and hacking skills.

To know the skills required to become a data scientist, refer this article by udacity:

8 Skills You Need to Be a Data Scientist

 

STEP 2:

Now that you’re aware of what data science is, lets see if you really want to be a data scientist. For that, take this quiz from Analytics Vidhya:

Should I become a data scientist?

 

STEP 3:

If you are a money-minded one, then also you are going to love data science. And if you’re someone who is foresighted then I must tell you that data science is going to be one of the most progressive IT fields in the next 5 years.

Now, if you fared well in step 2. Then here’s a marvelous video by Tetiana Ivanova for you to see what you will have to give to become a data scientist. Watch it till the end. You will learn a lot.

Tetiana Ivanova – How to become a Data Scientist in 6 months a hacker’s approach to career planning

 

STEP 4:

The last step would be reading articles, researching and attending meetups based on data science.

Dear fellow learner, if I could give you one advice, that would be: Follow your heart. Don’t fall under pressure just because people around you are pursuing data science or something else. Choose any approach but only and only if you love it. Otherwise, who knows if , ten years from now, you have to sit in a boring office cubicle contemplating your life, thinking that, I hope I listened to my heart, instead of theirs.

 

NotSoEngineer