Data Science Roadmap for 2022

29-Jun-2022

Data science has risen to a prominent state and is increasingly becoming an ever-in-demand field of discipline in the current era. The high value attached to data science can be attributed to the numerous innovations, digitizations and the internet of things taking hold of almost everything. 

To pursue a career in data science is without a doubt rewarding and will remain sustainable and relevant over the coming years. The more compelling factor to take care of however, is to know how to get on ahead in this field, the roadmap for data science learning and the possible trajectory of excelling in the industry. Through this elaborate post, let us discover the data science learning roadmap, critical skills and the ways in which one can attain. 

Data Science in Brief

Data Science is a new area of STEM that uses data to address challenging business issues. Data science creates solutions for all the complex business issues by applying statistical algorithms, machine learning models that can identify hidden patterns. Data science employs data in order to gain insights and produce desirable solutions. For instance, to better understand their consumers' preferences, several organizations apply data science tools on their customers' data.

Exploring the roadmap for Data Science

Skills required to enter the data science learning roadmap 

If one wants to pursue a profession in data science, they should be clear about the qualifications required to do so. Below are the traits that a data science aspirant must have in  order to succeed in the field:

• Exceptionally strong programming abilities in either Python or R.

• Strong command of probability, statistics, calculus, differential equations, and other sophisticated mathematical concepts.

• Thorough understanding of data visualization methods.

• The caliber for effective oral and written communication.

• The skill to explain scientific findings in a simple way.

• Strong talent at problem-solving.

• The potential to employ data for creating business solutions

• Extensive knowledge of the uses various machine learning and deep learning algorithms

• A bonus for those who have expertise in Natural Language Processing etc., which forms as a specialized domain in data science.

Understanding the Data Science Learning Roadmap

Now that you are aware of the critical skill sets, the next crucial step is going about the ways to learn data science skills. Below is a roadmap for data science training for aspirants seeking ways to learn,either individually or by taking up a data science course. 

Mathematics is Key

Mathematics is the cornerstone of the most cutting-edge tools and algorithms in data science. Therefore, it's crucial for beginners to understand all the fundamental mathematical concepts. These subjects include calculus, differential equations, matrix decompositions, and linear algebra. The majority of these are rather elementary and are covered in textbooks for high school.

The mathematical areas that are majorly required in Data science are:

Linear Algebra: Linear equations, matrix and operations, vectors, matrices types, log and exponential functions, sets eigenvalues etc are all key elements in data science working operations.  

Probability: The various types of Probability like joint or conditional probability are used extensively in Bayes theorem and decision trees for machine learning. Again probability distributions are critical for pattern analysis, forecasting, exploratory data analysis and detecting outliers, etc. 

Calculus: Calculus is largely effective for generalizing solutions. To forecast or predict likely outcomes, multivariate calculus is employed to determine the contribution of each variable to the solution. 

Optimization: To better comprehend the internal operation of the algorithm optimization is a must have knowledge. Knowing optimization leads to gaining quicker desired accuracy and also then having the knowledge of tuning the parameters. All these accumulated knowledge and experience will help in developing new algorithms.

Code those equations in Mathematics

Math is more enjoyable when you get to put those algorithms into practice. And the reason for that is that the researchers have already developed a number of excellent and simple-to-use functions and libraries for speedy implementation. Thus, all that is required to get started is learning the programming language's grammar. 

Given that Python is one of the most widely used languages in the data science industry, we advise starting with it and using this book, Learning with Python by Green Tea Press, to gain a solid understanding of the language. It covers all the basics, including variables, expressions, commands, loops, and functions.

Explore algorithms

The next step is to understand data science algorithms once you have mastered coding. As they are simple to learn, supervised machine learning algorithms are a good place to start. They should then investigate unsupervised machine learning and reinforcement learning techniques after that. They must then concentrate on comprehending various deep learning techniques. Knowledge which parameters may be changed to produce customized models is crucial while learning about various algorithms because it improves understanding of how they are implemented.

Dive into Statistics

Statistics is the next step on the data science learning roadmap. Massive amounts of data must be gathered in order to be processed and analyzed. This satisfies every requirement of data science. Statistics provides a simple method for condensing, analyzing, and visualizing data in a variety of ways. Understanding how to apply statistical formulas is helpful at different levels in data research. Statistics may be categorized into two types- Descriptive statistics - which offers the basic comprehension of data and Inferential statistics that deal with more complexities and is applied to draw inferences from the results provided by descriptive statistics. 

Expert in all Trades

Master of none, but a jack of all trades! Although many individuals adhere to this saying, data scientists are not quite free to choose their bias. They should be knowledgeable on fascinating data science subfields like computer vision and natural language processing, for example. They are likely to collaborate with a group of NLP researchers, computer vision engineers, etc., which explains why. It is thus highly advisable that prospective professionals work with experts and familiarize oneself with the varied uses of data science technologies. 

Practice Constantly

The saying practice makes perfect stands true and relevant in your data science career as well. Numerous practices on varied projects will reap you polished and diverse skills. It is important to develop skills and diversify them to excel in data science careers and constant practice alone will bring such results. 

Learn Cloud Computing

In addition to the above skill sets, with the constant evolution of the data world, it is important to keep upgrading one's knowledge and skill and meet industrial needs. One such transition is the Cloud computing. Cloud computing has become a fundamental necessity of big data analytics. The interference of cloud computing has resulted in easier and quicker deployment of data solutions and amplified computing power. Hence cloud computing has also become a crucial component in the roadmap for a data science career. 

Prospective professionals may begin by learning the three most popular cloud computing platforms: Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Google Cloud. Each of this cloud platforms offer their own unique sets of features. Getting trained or enrolling in a course in any one or all of them will prove highly beneficial for any individual interested in pursuing a data science career. 

Work on your soft Skills

It's true when we say it's the most crucial skill you need to learn and develop. Unbelievable as it may seem, the best presentation and communication abilities are what land jobs.

Presentation and communication abilities are crucial in any career and majorly in data science. Excellent communication skill is a necessity as professionals are required to translate and communicate information acquired in data format into simple and easy terms that are comprehensible to those that may or may not possess skills at your level. 

One way to achieve such talent is to expand your horizon, participate in your community and lend a hand. The most ideal instance would be to participate in open-source projects like GitHub or Omdena and create your own group of peers and fans who share similar interests and career goals. 

What Does a Data Science Career Look Like?

Now that you are clear about the roadmap of a data science career, get to know in brief what data science profession entails. Let us point out the daily duties that data scientists perform daily:

• To frame business problems and their answers, use data science methods.

• Communicate a dataset's requirements to the data engineering team.

• To the company's many stakeholders, present business solutions.

• Create predictive models for diverse factors using a variety of machine learning and deep learning techniques.

• For effective contribution to the overall business objectives, collaborate and engage with multiple teams

• Employ analytics methods and data visualization for performing exploratory data analysis.

• Implementing varied algorithms of machine learning and deep learning in programming languages like R, Python, SQL etc. 

Data science career is projected to witness exceeding growth in the coming years following its successive growth of 650 percent in 2012. As per the analysis of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, data science jobs will continue to grow and are often seen compared with jobs like that of Web Developers or software engineers. The year 2026 is estimated to have data science talent accumulation of 11.5 million approximately. These staggering numbers reflect how making a career in data science is going to prove fruitful and worthwhile.

That's about it on the roadmap of data science learning . The information you have read about will be highly beneficial if you could implement them in your career plan and diligently work towards achieving it.

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