Data Science has many misconceptions among students in Pakistan. Majorly, the individuals think that Data Science is just about learning Python and building analytical models. This article is meant to remove those misconceptions and explain the field of Data Science to help individuals land on the right job in the market.

What is Data Science?

Understanding data science is pertinent to build the essential skills required to start a sustainable career in this field. 

Contrary to the common public narrative, Data Science is defined as an interdisciplinary field that is a mixture of three major fields. These are listed as: Computer Science/IT, Math and Statistics, and Domain/Business Knowledge. 

Now don’t let your mind fear away from looking at the chart and let us explain the simple logic behind Data Science.

The above data science image implies that an ideal data scientist needs to gain expertise in the three areas, so that knowledge is combined to perform basic data scientist tasks.

These tasks are the foundational job roles of a data scientist and includes:

1- enabling machine learning (also includes preparing and cleaning data, as per the business problem at hand)

2- writing code to run a machine learning model

3- performing traditional research for improvement  

So you have noticed we mention machine learning models right? Now, before we close the definition of Data Science we will put final remarks on the distinction of Data Science from a relevant field of Artificial intelligence. 

The chart below clarifies the differentiation where AI (including ML and DL) comes to enable the features of Data Science technology. This means human engineered statistical models, and automated neural networks will be employed to fulfill the promise of data science. 

What are the skills of a data scientist?

At this point, you will recognize that industrial experts are looking for data scientists who have the skill set of:

1-) Data Engineer who fetches and cleanses the relevant data from a database

2-) Machine learning expert who builds and runs ML models

3-) Storyteller who demystifies technical knowledge for non-technical staff

Missing any one of these, you can’t land on a good data science job.

Learn more on the skills of data scientist by visiting our article on ‘Become a data scientist in Pakistan, the right career advice‘.

Career Advice to become a Data Scientist in Pakistan

We have the best career advice for you to become a data scientist in Pakistan by Pakistan’s analytics leader Ali Raza Anjum.