Big Data and the demand for Data Scientists

[Popcorn Sutton]

I believe that politicians are extremely smart depending on their history and where or with who they are located. I was wondering though, will the next presidential candidates (or any candidate for that matter) be involved in data science? Our world is changing very rapidly. "[People tend to think that the change is linear, but it's actually exponential.]" -see Ray Kurzweil, law of accelerating returns.

We need to be on top of our game, absolutely. The data that we are getting from all the people connected across the globe is growing exponentially. I hear that we make as much data in 10 minutes now that has ever existed in the history of humanity up until the year 2009 (don't quote me on that,

).

I sincerely believe that our population here in the US is ignorant of the philosophy that brought us to this point. We need to find a way to help our citizens understand the reasons behind our political actions. There's a lot more depth to politics than what the average person thinks (and I am no expert on this subject). The layman usually thinks that our government is "corrupt". They probably have good reasons to believe that, but I've never been involved in conspiracy theories. I make it a point to steer clear of conspiracy theories, and my reason for that is because I will not allow my brain/mind to specialize in something that is NOT productive and will bring paranoia and hate into ones mentality. I believe that our politicians are very concerned with not only keeping our citizens safe, but maintaining safety for the sake of itself. This planet is too precious and humanity is the best and most intelligent species to ever exist on the face of this planet (not to mention that we still haven't found life on any other planet [unless you believe the mars life experiment that was suppressed by NASA]).

Big data is insane. The progression of the amount of data that we are gathering is FAR beyond our capability to analyze it. It may not be beyond our capability to analyze it, but the demand for Data Scientists is ASTRONOMICALLY HIGH. As in the video that I posted of the Ted Talk, the speaker says that when he graduated, there were approximately 100 applicants for every job... that formula has been flipped upside down for data science. There are approximately 100 jobs for every applicant in data science. It's pretty insane huh? He says that by the end of the year (2013) there [will be] more than a million jobs for data scientists that will just not be filled. I'm employed as a data scientist and I love every moment of it. There are very few people who meet the qualifications for this type of field.

The skills required of data scientists consist of an array of extremely interdisciplinary intelligence. I, personally, think that philosophers are most suited to handle this type of work (as Philosophy superordinates every known field of study and directly superordinates Science and Politics). Here's a few examples of the skills required of data scientists-

Machine Learning

Pattern Recognition

Scripting languages (such as Python, Perl, Ruby, etc.).

Low level languages (Java, C#, C++, etc.)

MySQL, NoSQL, Hadoop, Hive, Pig, MapReduce, ETL, etc.

Data Mining

Data Cleansing

Parsing

Natural Language Processing

Statistics

Regression

Hierarchical Decision Trees

Advanced degrees in quantitative analysis or a related field.

These are just the skills that I remember. You'd be lucky as hell to find someone qualified for this type of work. No one truly knows how to interview for a person of this stature. Most employers know that the chances of finding someone qualified for this type of work is astronomically low and, if you do find one who is qualified, they're extremely difficult to retain. These people are in demand, and the people who get involved in this type of work are probably known by people who are pretty high up there in the political hierarchy.

I wonder, how important are Data Scientists? How far will someone go to retain a Data Scientist? I don't know, but I think that it's something worth looking into.