Research
As a student switching from Computer Science to Data Science, and somehow ending up working with a math lab lol, I’ve always wondered why there even exists a role called Data Scientist. Since the very first day I stepped into Data Science, I kept seeing this diagram:
At first glance, the figure looks cool: “Oh wow, a data scientist can do the work of a mathematician, a computer scientist, and even more.” But for me, the deeper I go into this field, the more I start seeing all of that as a disadvantage.
We cannot do good, and fast, math like mathematicians. We do not always code as well or handle core computer science problems as deeply as computer scientists. And we often do not have as much domain knowledge as people coming directly from business, finance, physics, engineering, or other fields. Sometimes, it feels like we only know a little bit of everything. And if that is the case, why wouldn’t someone just hire a computer scientist with strong math knowledge, or a mathematician who can code?
So what is the point of Data Science? Why do we need a Data Science degree?
My first thought is that we need someone who is really sensitive to data. Not gonna lie, sometimes mathematicians spend most of their time creating beautiful equations, while computer scientists often want everything optimized in terms of complexity, systems, or performance. A data scientist somehow sits between them, staring at a monitor full of numbers, pointing to one small value, and saying, “That number is acting weird.” Or maybe a data scientist is just supposed to be that wonderful person who can do everything?
I don’t know. From my experience, undergraduate Data Science courses teach you everything. Maybe the same is true for other disciplines, but in Data Science it feels especially general. We learn social models. We learn how to simulate a bridge. We learn coding. We learn machine learning and AI. We learn databases. But we rarely learn the philosophy of being a data scientist.
So I try to do everything. I remember someone once said: “If you’re not sure about what you’re doing, just try everything. Maybe you won’t find anything, but at least you tried.” That is probably my philosophy too.