What is a Data Scientist?

According to the Harvard Business Review’s October 2012 article titled, Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century, a data Scientist is:

A high-ranking professional with the training and curiosity to make discoveries in the world of big data.

From my understanding, these are the skills a data scientist must have: expertise in data technology, statistics and probability, and business. A data scientist must also be a relentless problem solver driven by an entrepreneur-like passion to improve the world by understanding it.

I listened to some podcasts recently that seemed to give somewhat varying emphasis within their definitions.

Randy Zwitch, Sr. Data Scientist at Keystone Solution described the continuum between an Analyst and a Data Scientist on the company’s podcast, Podcast #2 – R U Serious?. In his explanation, Mr. Zwitch emphasizes the Data Scientist’s knowledge of technology and problem solving abilities.

In the episode titled Rebuffing "Buyer Beware"Attitude on Data Science from IBM’s The Big Data Hub podcast, the data scientist David Smith, vice president of Marketing and Community at Revolution Analytics, emphasizes statistics.

David Smith does talk about the need to know the statistical platform and language R; however, Randy Zwitch expands the technical skill requirements.