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How can i become a data scientist?

I am a biochemistry graduate. But now i am interested in a career in data scientist.

What can i do to establish a career as a data scientist without going back to university? Are there any professional certs that i can do?

Reply 1

CompSciEngineer

Data science as in big data? Probably graduate scheme which includes databases / coding

Reply 2

username2877554

Being a data scientist is a stressful job and it is a very competitive field, not many people find it fun and they do it purely for how much it pays. Are you sure you enjoy the subject?

It is a massive leap from Biochemistry all the way to Data Analysis/Science

Reply 3

TSRUser12345

Most important question is: Why do you want to do it?

Depends on your previous experience. Data Science needs a strong statistical background as well as programming skills. If you don't have much experience programming or have good statistical grounding it may be hard to self learn. Jobs Description normally ask for degree in Maths, Engineering or Compsci and a use of statistics in an academic setting.

A ML/Data Science/Computational Mathematics Masters would look better on paper than online courses/self taught.

Why don't you want to go back to uni? Finance, CBA?

There are some companies who are willing to train you in Software engineering as longs as you have strong academics, much fewer who train data scientists from what I've seen.

So since you don't want to go back to uni:
-Try to find a data science grad scheme
-If that fails try to find a software engineering to build up programming experience (You will have to learn ML/Stats stuff yourself)
-Use Kaggle, GITHUB etc as mentioned above to improve (Companies want to see stuff you have built even for those who have CS degrees)
-Don't stop learning

Grad Scheme

Quora will have better answers already there

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 4

threeportdrift

Careers Forum Helper

Original post by HucktheForde

Look at your local/previous University - they will have entry level roles, and your old Uni is likely to be more flexible about employing an alum. Look at any Science Faculty and the central University IT department.

Reply 5

alexs2602

I swear I just posted something but it didn't appear. Lets try again.

From what I've found, if you don't have any experience in them I would recommend looking into R, python and mySQL. And if you do need to you should probably look at one at a time as it should make it easier to learn.