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Seems like "data scientist" is now code for "junior Python developer". I need a person who actually knows statistics, how to integrate, what Bayes' theorem mea

Seems like "data scientist" is now code for "junior Python developer". I need a person who actually knows statistics, how to integrate, what Bayes' theorem means in practice, the difference between a confidence and a credible interval, etc. What would this person be called in 2021? (I understand that searching for "data scientist" candidates would be a waste of my time.)

jstx1 5y ago
> Seems like "data scientist" is now code for "junior Python developer". No, it isn't. > I need a person who actually knows statistics, how to integrate... Maybe someone with a strong mathematical education and commercial experience in research... like the author of the post? Just because they focused on some more basic SWE concepts in a blog post doesn't mean that they don't know statistics. > What would this person be called in 2021? Data scientist, research scientist, probably some other titles too.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  Forgive me, but the blog is titled "what I learned from my first two years as a data scientist", and I'd rather trust the author on their word and not speculate. (And the experience of me working with dozens of data scientists corroborates - "data science" means basic Python programming and the kind of boring trial-and-error feature engineering tasks you'd typically assign to a junior software developer.) I want a person who actually uses statistics and math to drive business decisions, not just someone who took some statistics courses in university before becoming a software developer. P.S. Honest question, really. I don't want to sift through 500 resumes before finding the person I want.
  - FridgeSeal 5y ago
    Ha, I did maths at uni and when I first graduated, the role you described was basically my dream job. What you call the title is up to you, “data scientist” will probably net you a lot of people who mostly want to build machine-learning models, maybe “applied statistician” or “data analyst” is a better bet? Hiring out of a local uni is possibly also a decent choice if you can deal with having to bring some maths/stats grads’ business knowledge up to scratch.
co2benzoate 5y ago
You are looking for a statistician.

jstx1 5y ago

> Seems like "data scientist" is now code for "junior Python developer". No, it isn't. > I need a person who actually knows statistics, how to integrate... Maybe someone with a strong mathematical education and commercial experience in research... like the author of the post? Just because they focused on some more basic SWE concepts in a blog post doesn't mean that they don't know statistics. > What would this person be called in 2021? Data scientist, research scientist, probably some other titles too.

otabdeveloper4 5y ago
Forgive me, but the blog is titled "what I learned from my first two years as a data scientist", and I'd rather trust the author on their word and not speculate. (And the experience of me working with dozens of data scientists corroborates - "data science" means basic Python programming and the kind of boring trial-and-error feature engineering tasks you'd typically assign to a junior software developer.) I want a person who actually uses statistics and math to drive business decisions, not just someone who took some statistics courses in university before becoming a software developer. P.S. Honest question, really. I don't want to sift through 500 resumes before finding the person I want.
- FridgeSeal 5y ago
  Ha, I did maths at uni and when I first graduated, the role you described was basically my dream job. What you call the title is up to you, “data scientist” will probably net you a lot of people who mostly want to build machine-learning models, maybe “applied statistician” or “data analyst” is a better bet? Hiring out of a local uni is possibly also a decent choice if you can deal with having to bring some maths/stats grads’ business knowledge up to scratch.

co2benzoate 5y ago

You are looking for a statistician.