i'm going to talk about the 3 most important skills that you need to become
a successful data scientist and guess what
these skills don't include python machine learning
sql not even pandas then what skills are those
[Music] i divide the skills for a data scientist
in two broad categories one is core skills
and the second one is the tool skills so python
are machine learning mysql these are all tool skills these are the tools that
we use to solve data science problems but we
need to focus more on core skills which which are even
more important and number one core skill is business
understanding let's say company sales are declining
and they are hiring you as a data scientist
to figure out you know why the sales are declining now
as a data scientist the first thing you need is
a business understanding let's say the company is selling
clothes we need to have an understanding on
retail business around clothes you know how
online shopping websites such as amazon are impacting
the reading within business what trends are going on you know youngsters
are wearing trending clothes so what what trends are going on
you need to build that business understanding
and it can be built by using two approaches number one is you take a
degree in specific domain let's say you are becoming a data
scientist in finance now you take a degree in finance you know because then
you study about companies balance sheet accounting
principles macro economics microeconomics you build the
knowledge when you are taking that degree the second way to build knowledge
of the domain or business is to work in that particular industry and
while you're working in that industry talk to as many people as you can you
know talk to people who are in retail industry try to understand their pain
ask the right set of questions and once you understand their pains
ask the right set of question also another important thing is curiosity
you know you need to have that curious mindset just think
why things are working in certain way why online websites such as amazon are
you know gaining momentum and killing the brick and mortar store business etc
and once you have that curiosity and observation skills
building a domain knowledge or business understanding is not that hard
second most important skill is analytical thinking
analytical thinking is all about using the
tools that you know to solve a given problem
there is a saying that a person with a name
with a hammer in the hand for that person everything looks like a nail
so if you know just one tool okay and if you don't know how to use other tools
then it will every every problem looks like a nail
which is not good so as a data scientist of course you
have the two skill sets so you know python panda has power bi whatever all
those tool skills and now you have a problem at hand we
need to have that mind that analytical mind which can help you decide
which tool to use for which type of problem and in what situation
you know that decision making or that common sense
that sense of judgment is very very important and we call that problem
solving skill in general you know problem solving is
all about here's a given problem how do you use your tools to solve that
given problem so maybe as a data scientist now let's say i'm analyzing
companies declining sales maybe i can do simple excel analysis
and i can figure it out that okay in north indian region
there is this competition because of which our sales are declining and once
we address that we have solved eighty percent of your
problem so in that case you don't have to build
uh crazy looking machine learning model you know so having that mindset that
analytical mindset is very important and sometimes you need to
use simple techniques such as simple excel analysis rather than building
predictive models and wasting your time on useless things
so analytical thinking is very important critical thinking is
a skill that not many people focus on critical thinking is
all about thinking about a problem from various angles you know various
dimensions and critical thinking is something that can
make your analytical thinking more powerful it's kind of
it's included in analytical thinking the number two skills that we are just
talking about and once you have built that critical
thinking you will be able to become a better data scientist i've seen this
trend where people spend days and hours and hours in learning
python deep learning all kind of crazy
frameworks but friends don't waste your time if you are
not focusing on your core skills having too much knowledge in tool skills
will not be helpful at all third most important
skill is communication especially presentation and storytelling
again as a data scientist let's say i did some analysis
on my last two years of numbers and i figured out a strategy
to increase my sales number now if i cannot communicate that effectively to
my business manager or to my boss there is no point the whole point behind
data science is you crunch your data crunch your numbers
and come up with a strategy that can help
business solve a given pain point powerpoint presentation for example
there are some simple tips use dark theme don't use too much
text you know go by steve job strategy use a simple
image visualization use storytelling how many of us spend time in improving
our powerpoint skill very few of us focus on powerpoint
skills you know and just think about ceos and top level
guys they work mainly in powerpoint right
so powerpoint skills are extremely important and i read
an article on howard business review recently
where they asked this question to a prominent data scientist
saying that okay which skill is more important building deep learning models
all building effective power points and that person said
the answer is building effective power point presentation don't get me wrong
we need to have deeper learning knowledge but at a core
these core skills are very very important which is presentation
storytelling and all of this comes under
communication overall so here's the nice diagram again
reviewing what we just talked about at the core we have three
important most important core skills outer layer
you have the tool skills i hope you find this video useful if you did please
share it with your friends so that they can
focus on those right set of skills