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I have a new class on Skillshare which deals with data cleaning also a class on machine learning

What do you need to be a data scientist? Having a PhD in math or statistics would help but it is not essential. What is essential, I think,  is curiosity, self motivation to keep learning new things and resilience - things will go wrong and hit dead ends, you need to find ways to keep going.  The YouTube video below gives I think one person's honest opinions and experience on working as a data scientist.

I agree with the video that there are different roles within data science. For large companies these might be divided into analytics, machine learning/deep learning specialists and data engineers while some companies might still look for the data science unicorn who can do everything.

I also think that no matter how much you know, even if you are the unicorn, if you want to progress in data science you need to keep learning and pushing yourself.

the sexiest job of the 21st century?

​Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it… 

— Dan Ariely

Some reality - here