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A Day in the Life of a Data Scientist

By Eshna Verma

Last updated on May 4, 2023 79013

Table of Contents

What Does a Data Scientist Do

Working With Data, Data Everywhere

Communicating With a Wide Range of Stakeholders

Keeping Up with the Changes

Getting Started As a Data Scientist 

Did you use the Internet today? Visit Facebook? Buy from Amazon? Check the weather on your
smartphone? Watch a YouTube video? Use Uber? Connect on LinkedIn? Text your coworker?
If you did any of these activities, you generated data. And you’re only one of the billions who is
also generating data. In fact, Internet users now generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day,
and 90 percent of the data we have today was generated in just the past two years. 

For businesses and organizations that can learn and benefit from that data, the explosive growth
seems like a dream come true. That data is meaningless without ways to capture and analyze it,
however, a fact that is driving the strong demand for data science professionals.  

What Does a Data Scientist Do

Data scientists are professionals who are skilled at extracting meaningful information from and
interpreting data, which involves both statistical and machine learning tools and techniques, as
well as human understanding. During the collection, cleaning, and munging of data, she spends a
considerable amount of time, since data is never clean.

Data scientists analyze which questions need to be answered and where the relevant data can be
located. Besides possessing business acumen and analytical skills, they are also skilled in
mining, cleaning, and presenting data. Unstructured data is sourced, managed, and analyzed by
businesses using data scientists.

A data scientist is an expert in statistics, data science, Big Data, R programming, Python, and
SAS, and a career as a data scientist promises plenty of opportunity and high-paying salaries.
Harvard Business Review has declared data science the sexiest job of the 21st century.
Glassdoor named data scientist as the number one job in the U.S., with a job score of 4.8 out of
5, and a satisfaction rate of 4.2 out of 5. The median base salary is $110,000 and there are
thousands of unfilled jobs right now, with many more to come. 

The career potential definitely sounds promising, but you might be wondering, what exactly does
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Working With Data, Data Everywhere

A data scientist’s daily tasks revolve around data, which is no surprise given the job title. Data
scientists spend much of their time gathering data, looking at data, shaping data, but in many
different ways and for many different reasons. Data-related tasks that a data scientist might
tackle include:

Pulling data

Merging data

Analyzing data

Looking for patterns or trends

Using a wide variety of tools, including R, Tableau, Python, Matlab, Hive, Impala, PySpark,
Excel, Hadoop, SQL and/or SAS 

Developing and testing new algorithms

Trying to simplify data problems

Developing predictive models 

Building data visualizations

Writing up results to share with others

Pulling together proofs of concepts

All these tasks are secondary to a data scientist’s real role, however: Data scientists are primarily
problem solvers. Working with this data also means understanding the goal. Data scientists
must also seek to determine the questions that need answers, and then come up with different
approaches to try and solve the problem.

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Communicating With a Wide Range of Stakeholders

Even meetings will revolve around data, as you seek to understand the problems, which leads us
to another part of an atypical data scientist’s day: communicating with others who are not data
experts. This might seem like it would play a minor role in a data scientist’s day, but quite the
opposite is true because ultimately your job is to solve problems, not build models. 

It’s important to remember that although a data scientist is working with data and numbers, the
reason behind it is driven by a business need. Being able to see the big picture from a
department’s point of view is critical. So is the ability to understand the strategy behind the need,
and to help people understand the implications of their decisions. 

A data scientist spends time in meetings and responding to emails, as do most people in the
corporate world. But the ability to communicate might be even more important for a data
scientist. During those meetings and emails, you must be able to explain the science behind the
data in a way a layman can understand, as well as being able to understand their problems as
they see them, not as a data scientist sees them. 

Keeping Up with the Changes

Working with data and working with others will both make up a huge part of your day, should you
decide to pursue a career as a data scientist. The rest of your day will be spent keeping up with
the data science field. New information comes out daily as other data scientists figure out a way
to solve a problem, and then share their new knowledge. A data scientist therefore usually
spends part of the day reading industry-related blogs, newsletters and discussion boards. They
might attend conferences or network online with other data scientists. And every once in a while,
they might be the ones to share new information. 

As a data scientist, you don’t want to waste time reinventing the wheel. If someone else has a
better way to solve a problem, you want to know. Keeping up with change is the only way you will
be able to do that.

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Getting Started As a Data Scientist 

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About the Author

Eshna Verma

Eshna writes on PMP, PRINCE2, ITIL, ITSM, & Ethical Hacking. She has done her Masters in
Journalism and Mass Communication and is a Gold Medalist in the same. A voracious reader,
she has penned se…

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