“Data scientist,” according to reports in the trade press, is the new “hot career.” But defining the skills required for such work is difficult, as the relatively and supposedly new field of data science is still very much nebulously defined, including the associated term, “big data.” Author Sebastian Gutierrez, a self-described and certainly qualified “data entrepreneur,” tackles the problem of defining data science and its practitioners by interviewing 16 researchers drawn from the many fields that big data encompasses.

This book presents detailed interviews with prominent researchers at organizations that one would expect to have collected or generated enormous quantities of social, commercial, or scientific data. Interviewees include individuals from the New York Times, Netflix, Facebook, Nordstrom, LinkedIn, and other companies currently exploring and exploiting the data they collect from customers and end users of their services.

The book does not detail the technical methods and components used by the researchers. Rather, it highlights the backgrounds of the researchers and provides overviews of the problems they investigate. As such, it describes the “typical day” of a data scientist, focusing on the variety and creativity needed to discover useful knowledge hidden within mountains of data.

Several of the interviewees cited earlier works [1,2] as foundations and inspirations for many of today’s approaches to data analysis, so readers not familiar with those authors would gain important insight by reviewing their work.

Included among the interview questions by the author are those eliciting advice to students and others looking to enter the field of data research. Typical of the recommendations is the requirement for general technical training in computer science and statistics, including specific tools like Hadoop and R, but with significant emphasis on domain knowledge. Organizations hiring for such positions are also looking for traits like curiosity and tenacity along with technical skills. As the author states, “those who can understand data and extract value from it are needed more than ever.”

This book is not a tutorial on data science and does not include any formal definition of the field resulting from the author’s interviews. But readers will certainly find much value in the personal stories of practitioners actively involved in big data research.

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