The Worst Part About Data Science Degrees.

Here is my argument on why you shouldn't actually pursue a data science undergrad degree.
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[@danielfoley9364]

Here’s the thing: every single entry level data scientist position I’ve looked into (at least in the realm of science, clinical analytics, and other higher education disciplines) REQUIRES a master’s as a minimum qualification now. It’s not a matter of what the degree teaches you. Its about the fact that you have a degree

[@emisnikki-polygloddess8149]

I did essentially what you suggested in this video, got my undergrad degree in linguistics (Japanese and English) and moved on to get a Master's in Linguistic Data Science (will be done by the end of this year). It is quite different to what I had imagined, I've struggled a lot over the last 18 months, and I'm not sure what I want to do after I'm done, because I realized that I do not enjoy coding for the sake of coding, as the "main" activity. However, this degree also opened my eyes to the intersection between technology and language and I really enjoy understanding the concepts behind a lot of the stuff (such as machine translations, transformers and NLG, NLP, TTS and STT...). My biggest surprise was that I enjoy learning statistics and don't mind writing the necessary code to do regression analyses and all that. Right now I'm a little worried that I won't be able to find a job once I graduate, because of my background (not having come from CS or the like). I'm just not sure if (in your Adobe example) recruiters understand yet that having a videographer/editor, who also learned CS/DS etc. is just as valuable if not more than someone who went hardcore CS/DS but knows nothing about Adobe and its application and use cases. Whenever I look at companies hiring for NLP-like positions they have the craziest CS requirements and not much of anything else - I'm hoping that this will change in the future.

[@datanash8200]

That's very interesting, I wouldn;t have anticipated that. Which country are the jobs you are looking at based in as maybe their requirements are much more stringent. Are you still studying or purely on the job hunt?

[@siphembonambi3361]

Amazing content as usual. I did my undergraduate in Marketing and am currently doing a Masters in Applied Data Science. In my class of around 90 students there are only 2 coming from a marketing background. We did have a hectic coding entrance exam so I guess that played a huge part in cutting some people out the program because its filled with people from engineering and economics. Luckily I did well in my stats and economics classes in undergrad so even though I'm a bit nervous I'm really excited about it. They opted to make it a 2 year program because they didn't believe one year was enough for the amount of content that needs to be learnt.

[@eduardosoares7453]

Nash as always posting great content

[@datanash8200]

Appreciate it!

[@neonxumalo3647]

I have a math bachelors and am studying data science right now and I completely agree. When I took courses like optimization methods which are more mathematically heavy, I had an easier time compared to taking big data where I learned to use Apache Hadoop.

[@datanash8200]

Love to hear that!

[@stag_beats]

what do you think is the best to become a machine learning engineer : 1) go to a software engineering undergrad and self learn data science and machine learning in parallel with your studies 2) go to a data science undergrad straight away

[@datanash8200]

Both solid options, I would go with option 1

[@stag_beats]

@@datanash8200 thanks for replying but can you provide context on why would you chose 1?

[@TheBarinco]

I did my undergrad in econ and i wish i did it mine in pure statistics. There are two levels of stats for people who are data scientists. First is the level where you know stats and have memorized the concepts. Like you can tell me exactly how to do an a/b test of proportions without looking it up or you can calculate the expectation of a custom pdf. The second level is being to bridge together logic from all the complexities of the real world into an extremely rigorous application. That second level only comes from having insanely strong foundational stats/math knowledge. The stuff covered in masters data science is like childs play to the second level. I feel like there is a whole level of understanding that i am missing because I thought coding was as important as stats for data science. Its not. Its a lot easier for a statistician to pick up coding than for a software engineer to pick up statistical intuition. Its really easy to know when you did coding wrong. Its really hard to know that you did statistics wrong. Most of the time when you do something wrong statistically, the effect will be subtle. Whats worse is that real world data is messy and you have to operate in a gray zone. Having a strong statistical intuition is the only way you can navigate through the gray zone without commiting horrible mistakes.

[@datanash8200]

That is such a great point! Couldn't have worded it better myself. I would definitely agree that there are different levels of data scientists when it comes to maths (and even coding to be fair). If people want to be in that higher level, studying maths at BSc would be such an advantage

[@metastract]

Spot on. I'm an educational assessor and trainer for degree apprenticeships and that's another type of training with inbuilt degree qualification people could look into.

[@datanash8200]

Thats a great shout!

[@maxmuller2769]

Finance here we come

[@datanash8200]

Shameless...I like it

[@user-ih6uq5bx6r]

Is it possible if i have undergraduate degree with digital business and economics (this degree program consists some course related to analysis ) so is it possible to have a career in data science or analyst

[@datanash8200]

100%

[@maveriks463]

CompSci, Statistics, Economics, Physics,maths.

[@mioszbies903]

I did economics and then DS. The amount of additional work you need to dedicate to understand software engineering is substantial, but I do understand business and people working in it quite well which makes me a very good sort of consultant to gather the expectations and then code them.

[@maxmuller2769]

​@@mioszbies903 dude what do you earn

[@datanash8200]

I think hes making the point that self learning the coding is not easy, but once he did he now has an advantage in knowing his domain

[@rustinshamloo5557]

Bro forgot engineering lol

[@guthriethornley8245]

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