This is so very, very true. The major change appears to be one of scale, rather than any qualitative change. Funnily enough, since I put predictive analytics (what does that term even mean, anyway?) on my CV I've gotten much more attention from recruiters and employers. I guess it sounds so much sexier than statistics.
More seriously though, the requirements to be able to hack up a prototype and talk to people are probably what hold back a lot of people who otherwise have the skills to be good "data scientists", or just scientists.
My current employers told me at interview that they had no data, and in the three months I've been there I've been slowly discovering that they have loads of it, unfortunately in multiple incompatible forms and jealously guarded by different departments. It is rather funny, though a little sad that they were essentially drowning in data and didn't realise it.
I agree that being able to hack up a prototype could really make someone stand out as a data scientist. The Insight Data Fellows program mentioned in the article has a 6 week program where the focus is on learning enough software development to hack a prototype by the end of the program. That could be a good way to go.
More seriously though, the requirements to be able to hack up a prototype and talk to people are probably what hold back a lot of people who otherwise have the skills to be good "data scientists", or just scientists.
My current employers told me at interview that they had no data, and in the three months I've been there I've been slowly discovering that they have loads of it, unfortunately in multiple incompatible forms and jealously guarded by different departments. It is rather funny, though a little sad that they were essentially drowning in data and didn't realise it.