# Do you know what a data scientist is without looking it up? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 11, 2013, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369 "2013-04-11T02:50:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/1 "2013-04-11T02:50:04Z")
In the circles I run around in, everybody does. But my contacts are not representative of the population at large, so I’m curious as to how widespread it is elsewhere. [Link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science) for the curious. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/2 "2013-04-11T02:57:07Z")
You should have had a ‘sort of’ option. I didn’t know what a formal definition was until I saw your link, but where I work we just call them people. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/3 "2013-04-11T03:15:40Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You should have had a ‘sort of’ option. I didn’t know what a formal definition was until I saw your link, but where I work we just call them people. Agreed. I understand the job description; I’ve just never heard anyone call themselves one. I guessed more or less correctly, though. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/4 "2013-04-11T03:16:47Z")
Never heard the term before. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/5 "2013-04-11T03:30:48Z")
I don’t really understand what it is even after reading the wiki article. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/6 "2013-04-11T03:31:00Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You should have had a ‘sort of’ option. Nope. [Forced choice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_choice). ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/7 "2013-04-11T04:02:07Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I don’t really understand what it is even after reading the wiki article. Same here. I don’t get how it’s different from a regular scientist, or mathematician, or statistician. (Oh, and I work in research - I’m skewing the data by refusing to vote, woohoo!) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/8 "2013-04-11T04:39:10Z")
I guessed what you meant and voted yes - but I work for a company which makes these products, published a review of a book on data mining, and work in the area myself now - and have heard no one call themselves or anyone else a data scientist. Analytics, referred to in your link, is much more common. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/9 "2013-04-11T07:33:03Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I don’t really understand what it is even after reading the wiki article. Agreed. The article just seemed to be a lot of buzzwords strung together. Oh and data scientists are really, really expert in all sorts of things, so many things that no-one really is expert in them all. There is really very little indication of what sort of problems a data scientist might work on, how they might solve those problems, or what a “data science” solution might look like. It is hard to tell whether this is just because it is a bad Wiki article, or whether “data science” is a bullshit field. (Perhaps a bullshitty way of rebranding stuff that people have been doing under different names for ages.) Is it to do with _data mining_, or maybe _information science_, because I have a general idea what those are? ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/10 "2013-04-11T07:54:59Z")
It’s the plural of datum scientist. My alternate joke before I decided to go with the above: “Is data scientist?” “No. Data janitor. Dat guy over dere in da white coat, _data_ scientist.” ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/11 "2013-04-11T08:09:29Z")
I don’t know what it is, but the wiki article makes it sound really tedious. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/12 "2013-04-11T09:20:16Z")
I’ve never heard the term, but I guessed about right… I think. Like others I’m a bit confused by Wikipedia’s description. It mostly reminds me of most of the machine learning people I know that specialize in data mining (as opposed to cognition, game playing, etc). ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/13 "2013-04-11T11:09:24Z")
This sounds like my dream job. Too bad I’ve invested years and years of time and money into a completely different field. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/14 "2013-04-11T11:33:34Z")
That has to be one of the most poorly written wikipedia articles I’ve ever seen. Granted I could only suffer through the first couple paragraphs. I left completely unenlightened. No, I don’t know what a data scientist is, and on a related note, don’t really understand what synergy is either. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/15 "2013-04-11T13:08:46Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Agreed. The article just seemed to be a lot of buzzwords strung together. Oh and data scientists are really, really expert in all sorts of things, so many things that no-one really is expert in them all. There is really very little indication of what sort of problems a data scientist might work on, how they might solve those problems, or what a “data science” solution might look like. > > It is hard to tell whether this is just because it is a bad Wiki article, or whether “data science” is a bullshit field. (Perhaps a bullshitty way of rebranding stuff that people have been doing under different names for ages.) > > Is it to do with _data mining_, or maybe _information science_, because I have a general idea what those are? This is a pretty good description of the whole thing. Maybe 10 years ago this seemed like it would be a ‘thing’, but now it’s just what’s done with computers. It’s telling that no one here has heard of a person who calls themself a ‘data scientist’. ---
**Author:** ![mcgato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac8455/32.png) [@mcgato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcgato)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/16 "2013-04-11T13:15:11Z")
My job title is statistician. I am part of a Quantitative Sciences group. My last job had an internal “Data Sciences Meeting” every year. So I would say that I know what a data scientist is. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/17 "2013-04-11T13:35:14Z")
I read the OP, guessed the answer was a fancy way of describing a statistician, then checked the link to see if I was right. And then voted “no” on that basis. I still think my answer is better, though. ---
**Author:** ![PurpleClogs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f04885/32.png) [@PurpleClogs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PurpleClogs)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/18 "2013-04-11T15:02:00Z")
I believe this is what [Edward Tufte](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte) is. I’ve done his one day course and have a several of his books. Fascinating stuff if you’re someone responsible for creating, distributing, or presenting. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/19 "2013-04-11T15:40:17Z")
I have been called a business analyst and I know what this term means. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369/20 "2013-04-11T16:06:39Z")
I would think that, mathematicians excepted, _any_ scientist would be a data scientist. You can’t do science without data. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-what-a-data-scientist-is-without-looking-it-up/655369.md?page=2)