Data Roundup: Salaries, Resources, and Fun by Sam Edelstein

Thinking about becoming a data scientist? It is a popular field that has a lot of demand for workers. It offers the opportunity to help businesses make strategic decisions based on data from both inside and outside of the organization. And, it offers impressive salaries, too. Glassdoor compiled reported salaries for data scientists across many different companies. LinkedIn interns report making almost $50 per hour.

Learn Data Science

You like the sound of a six-figure salary, but now you need to know how to gain the skills. The School of Information Studies at Syracuse University offers a Certificate in Data Science, which can be completed online, too. Not ready to take the plunge into formal classes? There are tons of resources and free classes online. A couple that I’ve liked include, DataQuest which introduces data science using python and Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning Course on Coursera.

You can also check out some of the podcasts I wrote about last post, visit the data science subreddit, or check out DataTau for more resources or news.

Data in Sports

‘Deflategate’ is dominating sports headlines this week. Teams will soon have ways to take advantage of game-situations, only legally, using data. Real time data analysis, written about in Gigaom, would allow a football coach to know the statistical likelihood that going for it on fourth down is preferable to a punt. A basketball coach would know if fouling while up by three to send the opposing team to the line is the smart decision. Real time data could also allow coaches or trainers to monitor the health of players on the field.

If you want to learn more about analyzing sports data, check out the blog The Spread, which walks through different ways to use data science when it comes to sports. Building predictive models, clustering, and more, are all walked through on the blog.

Funny Data Images

A tumblr blog at bigdatapix.tumblr.com makes fun of the many ridiculous ways news outlets try to make graphics for data and data science. They are all pretty funny and worth a look.

What kind of data news have you heard about this week? Let us know what you think of these reports – or others you’ve discovered – here in the comments!