What is a Data Scientist?
Data scientists choose the questions their team should pose and work out how to use data to provide answers. For forecasting and reasoning, they frequently create predictive models.
A data scientist might do the following tasks on a day-to-day basis:
- Find patterns and trends in datasets to uncover insights
- Create algorithms and data models to forecast outcomes
- Use machine learning techniques to improve the quality of data or product offerings
- Communicate recommendations to other teams and senior staff
- Deploy data tools such as Python, R, SAS, or SQL in data analysis
- Stay on top of innovations in the data science field
A data scientist earns an average salary of $108,659 in the United States, according to Lightcast™ .
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there is a high need for data professionals, with the occupation of data scientists predicted to rise by 36 percent over the next ten years (far faster than normal) (BLS).
The emergence of big data and its growing significance to corporations and other organizations have been related to the increased demand.
What is a Data Analysist?
Data analysts often use tools like SQL, R or Python programming languages, data visualization software, and statistical analysis to solve real-world business problems with structured data. A data analyst may do the following typical tasks:
- Collaborating with organizational leaders to identify informational needs
- Acquiring data from primary and secondary sources
- Cleaning and reorganizing data for analysis
- Analyzing data sets to spot trends and patterns that can be translated into actionable insights
- Presenting findings in an easy-to-understand way to inform data-driven decisions
The average base salary for a data analyst in the US is $69,517 in December 2021, according to Glassdoor. This can vary depending on your seniority, where in the US you’re located, and other factors.
Data analysts are widely valued after. The second fastest expanding sector for jobs in the US, according to the World Economic Forum. Related professions are reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to have extraordinarily high growth rates.
Operations research analysts are predicted to have a 25% increase in employment between 2020 and 2030, market research analysts a 22% increase, and mathematicians and statisticians a 33% increase. That is a lot more than the 7.7 percent gain in overall employment.
Data analyst vs data scientist: What’s the difference?
Both data scientists and analysts typically work with data. What they do with those data, though, makes them distinct. Data analysts typically concentrate on analyzing data to find trends, patterns, and insights that can help businesses make wise decisions. Data scientists use data to build prediction models, develop machine learning algorithms, and extract deeper insights from data.
When collecting data from various sources, data analysts clean, and organize data, perform descriptive and basic statistical analysis, and create visualizations and reports to present their findings. Data scientists must take a far more complex procedure, as they not only analyze data but also design and implement advanced algorithms, machine learning models, and statistical analyses to solve complex business problems.
Data manipulation, cleansing, and visualization skills, as well as proficiency with tools like Excel, SQL, and data visualization libraries, are shared by both data analysts and data scientists (e.g., Tableau, Power BI). However, because data scientists require far more sophisticated data, their levels of expertise differ.visualization techniques, and data analyst is on a basic level of proficiency.
Data analysts should focus on what happened and why in order to provide insights and recommendations that can be implemented to support important decisions. A data scientist’s main objective is to derive predictive and prescriptive insights from data, resulting in models that can anticipate the future or automate decision-making.
The complexity of the duties also distinguishes data scientists from data analysts. The duties of a data analyst include exploratory data analysis, report generation, dashboard creation, trend identification, and client presentation of findings. The duties of a data scientist, on the other hand, include developing predictive models, clustering and classification, creating recommendation systems, NLP, and working with large data frameworks.
Due to all factors above, data scientist’s salary is a little bit higher than data analyst’s
Here are some other comparisions:
| Data analyst | Data scientist | |
| Mathematics | Foundational math, statistics | Advanced statistics, predictive analytics |
| Programming | Basic fluency in R, Python, SQL | Advanced object-oriented programming |
| Software and tools | SAS, Excel, business intelligence software | Hadoop, MySQL, TensorFlow, Spark |
| Other skills | Analytical thinking, data visualization | Machine learning, data modeling |
In conclusion, while both data scientists and analysts use data to offer insightful information, their roles and duties vary in terms of the level of analysis, the difficulty of the work, and the level of skill needed. Data scientists are interested in predictive and prescriptive analytics, which frequently need for more specialized technical skills and an understanding of machine learning techniques. Data analysts concentrate on descriptive analytics and drawing conclusions from historical data. Depending on the company and the kind of projects they are working on, different jobs and responsibilities may apply.