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Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

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Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#191

Post by sonofaragorn »

rifung wrote: post #179
kitanata wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here is a perfect example of why this position is gatekeeped so much. Having a PhD doesn’t automatically mean you think like a scientist of a mathematician, and having a bachelor’s degree and 15 years of experience writing code and then putting in the effort to read Elements of Statistical Learning, compeleting several online courses in machine learning and data science, studying probability, combinatorics…

> I can do everything you can do. Sorry but how would you even know? I understand your frustrations well since I don't have a BS. Still, as much as you seem to want to talk about how capable you are, you can't seem to understand the perspective of employers. Given what you've said about your history I suspect this is not due to a lack of intelligence but empathy. Employers have to go through many candidates, each of…

I commend you for writing this levelheaded reply. I was about to write one with essentially the same arguments but a much more aggressive tone.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#192

Post by mathinpens »

notlob wrote: post #140
peatmoss wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You start with a question, conduct experiments, analyze results, adjust your hypothesis, and repeat the process. This is missing my pet step: doing the literature review. I’m pretty ambidextrous when it comes to Python and R, so I’m not typically a combatant in the data science language flamewars. But... for as much as the Python community likes to assert their superior coding chops, I’ve observed that the R commun…

> This is missing my pet step: doing the literature review. One of the earliest, most important, and most useful lessons I learned from a senior grad student: "a day in the library can be worth a week at the bench."

Or this: you spend 4 months on a project and belatedly notice schmidhuber proved a much better result in 1985 and yells at you and you get kicked out of academia

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#193

Post by natalyarostova »

reureu wrote: post #141
kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

In my experience working as a data scientist in the health tech field for the past decade (as an "epidemiologist" and "health informaticist" before "data scientist" was a title), I've found folks who just pick up data science from an engineering background often have a simplistic view of working with data generated from human subjects. My training heavily stressed bias and confounding, study design, problem specifica…

I work as a Data Scientist, but my grad degree is in Political Economy. On the math/stats side I'm definitely weaker than some of my colleagues (and I appreciate their skill, and learning from them). But I often see people with much stronger math skills than myself make very critical errors when trying to make inference on data generated by humans.

I think a nice team can have some balance, with enough overlap that we can find common ground. I'd be uncomfortable without knowing I can rely on some of my peers on some of the heavier algorithmic or SDE stuff.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#194

Post by leetcrew »

snowwrestler wrote: post #173
stcredzero wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why PhDs are favored because with their experience having to write grants to get funding for their research they're exactly the type of people that can take a naive problem, work it to a result, and then sit in front of a board room of non-technical people and explain why their result was worth the money that was given to them. My wife has a PhD in comparative lit, but she now works in banking. Her PhD gave he…

I think training in literary analysis is a secret superpower for life. It gives people tools to make reliable inferences from text about motivations, assumptions, biases, etc., and to spot attempts to use phrasing to hide or obscure things. Great for reading emails, contracts, reports, etc.--and for editing your own writing for clarity (or not, if that's what you're going for...).

> I think training in literary analysis is a secret superpower for life

what exactly do you mean by literary analysis here? i have (in my opinion) extremely good reading comprehension skills, in that i can read and understand the literal meaning of almost any text (provided i understand the context), and i got an 800 on the critical reading section of the SAT. on the other hand, i can't for the life of me read a book and pick out any of the major themes without having them spoon-fed to me. i was always terrified when i was expected to have my own opinion about a text to use as the topic for a paper.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#195

Post by jlelonm »

aje403 wrote: post #61
kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

The average CS student didn't do that great in LA/Calc. Most CS programs don't require vector calc. At an average uni, the vector calc class/linear algebra will be extremely forgiving and you really don't need to understand the material. I don't think any undergrad CS program in the country teaches enough statistics and probability to understand some of the harder latent models or generative modeling. The math can ge…

What're some examples of a "harder latent model"

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#196

Post by ska »

kitanata wrote: post #145
ska wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are input to a classification routine. The job of those designing the routine is to reduce the false positive rate to as close to 0 as they can without incurring too high a false negative rate. So this sucks if you don't fit the model well in a way that has you often end up as a false negative - but that doesn't' mean the model is broken.

No. The model has a problem with overfitting. That’s my point.

Saying it doesn't make it true.

You are claiming there is a generalization problem that causes extra error in practice. Another perfectly viable hypothesis is that the classifier is working fine, it's just tuned for true positive rate and accepts a higher false negative rate to get it. Specificity vs. sensitivity is a fundamental trade off, not a training issue (though that can make both worse)

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#197

Post by photoJ »

kei929 wrote: post #117
erw1 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value does an advanced degree, in your opinion, bring to a data science position then? To hear you say it, it brings no value.

Prestige and artificially pumping salaries. It’s all about brand building. I don’t have an advanced degree, just a bachelors of math from 1995, and have been breadboarding (and more), and coding since the 80s I can follow along with ML and have implemented toys with the ML algorithms in a couple days. It’s bourgeois intellectualism. Like a law firm only hiring from Harvard ML is automated schema design. And the curre…

Well, to be more precise its like a law firm hiring only from those with law degrees.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#198

Post by ralphc »

bufordtwain wrote: post #120
kitanata wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here is a perfect example of why this position is gatekeeped so much. Having a PhD doesn’t automatically mean you think like a scientist of a mathematician, and having a bachelor’s degree and 15 years of experience writing code and then putting in the effort to read Elements of Statistical Learning, compeleting several online courses in machine learning and data science, studying probability, combinatorics…

Sure. Unjust as it may seem though, requiring a PhD in science is a free and simple way for employers to narrow down the field of candidates to those who are good at data science. It's the data science equivalent of requiring a CS degree when looking for a programmer. It's natural for employers to use that tool.

But if data scientist is the sexiest job of the 21st century, and everyone's going to need one or more, there won't be enough PhD's to go around. Someone's going to have to "take a chance" on the lesser degreed or risk falling behind their competitors that have data scientists of some effectiveness.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#199

Post by [deleted] »

kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

[deleted]

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#200

Post by CuriouslyC »

confounded wrote: post #55
CuriouslyC wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same experience in my last job search. I only did a bachelors. Even with many projects on my resume that were completely data science focused, my response rate was almost zero for those types of positions. My response rate was very good otherwise. It's frustrating. Based on my conversations at data science/analytics meetups, my knowledge is greater than that of the average employed data scientist. My sugges…

> Based on my conversations at data science/analytics meetups, my knowledge is greater than that of the average employed data scientist. Sounds like you may already be too good at data science to ever get any actual experience of it.

Not sure if you're intending to be snarky or not, but I mentioned the fact that I already had plenty of professional experience doing data science.
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