I decided to pick up Data Science because it has elements of mathematics and the soft sciences. I had thought my dream job would combine subjects in which I was really interested at university: mainly Mathematics, Linguistics, Physics, Computer Science and International Relations. Since then, I have realized that what interests me about these subjects is their intersections and connections.
A career in Data Science feels like an excellent way to jump into solving interesting challenges through meaningful work with a decent salary. However, I say “almost-perfect” in the title because there are qualifications in statistics, which is one of the foundations of data science. A data scientist needs to take probabilities and percentages into account, which is why I have reservations about saying this work could be “a perfect combination” for me.
At the most pessimistic scenario, I’ll have improved upon my skills of analyzing data and exercised the ability to think critically from my studies. I look forward to having a career coach to help me understand where I could fit into an employer’s job market. Then I can apply data science to find the educational program to which I would be most likely to be accepted or to analyze job postings and LinkedIn profiles to determine how my skills and background would fit in.
I see in Data Science the ability to draw conclusions from an intersection by analyzing data from one field and powerfully cross-referencing it with data from another field, while keeping accuracy and confidence intervals in mind. With today’s and the future’s computer capabilities, I’m excited to turn mathematics into code and combine it with data from the linguistics field, write software that creates applications based on a user’s predicted preferences, or another area entirely. Data Science can accomplish many tasks and I expect to adapt as the field changes.