'Am I a Data Scientist?': The Applied Statistics Student's Identity Crisis

• Activity Number: 294
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Alyssa Frazee*
• Companies: Stripe
• Keywords: data science ; programming ; applied statistics

Abstract

Data science is an exciting field! Most descriptions of the job hint at an appealing blend of statistics, math, programming, art, and business. "Data science" is also an ill-defined term: is it simply a tech-world rebranding of applied statistics? Is it data-oriented software engineering? Can you be a data scientist by training in some other field? Does the term even make sense? After all, science itself wouldn't exist without data! The field exploded during my graduate studies in applied statistics, so in this talk, I'll discuss what that looked like from my perspective. In particular, I will talk about how spending a summer immersed in programming and software engineering affected my mostly-academic perspective and contributed to my struggle with identifying as a "data scientist."