Studying statistics in the university, does it qualifie you to become a Data scientist?

 It’s a good start. Someone with a strong statistics background really has all it takes become a great data scientist.

Data science is not just about having mastery over a set of methods and tools, but rather a drive to discover and interpret what is hidden in data. 

You need to be able to grasp concepts in many fields quickly and be able to put yourself in the shoes of stakeholders in those fields.

Many times you are the only person who can access, make sense or even explain why things are the way they are. Which is a problem. You see, one of the responsibilities of a data scientist is to educate you clients on how and why you uncover the things you uncover. Passing this knowledge is key for them, your reputation and it’s just the right thing to do which will move forward their research or whatever work they do.

You need to become a good writer.

Data processing, R and Python scripts, and some matplotlib figures are of no value at all. 

You need to be able to extract meaning from data, understand what your clients needs, and make concise, convincing conclusions that are backed by your well documented results and experiments, and data such that your client can take quick action triggered by your work.

Executives, policy makers, and others don’t need to know the fancy things of the methods as they are just a distraction. If you’re reporting that through some really complicated stuff you arrived to “@&&&$,” then stop.

Plain language, no equations that trigger confident decisions is key.

A long time ago, every presentation I gave (20 years ago) was filled with math and concepts nobody understood. I realized that this came from a lack of confidence in my own work and myself. While people were impressed with my knowledge, they left meeting with nothing to make decisions with.

Later, after learning that I helping run businesses and who my audience really was, then I learned to present the work for the audience that needed to make decisions from my work.

Now, I understand people are very busy. People are very tied up with responsibilities, and cannot pay a lot attention and invest the brain power to learn any new stuff that will not help the immediately.

Keep it simple, dumb things down, always. Put conclusions in such a way that can help executives or others take action. And reference the work you did in case they need to verify or backup their claims.

Reference 

From fb.