Worldwide known data science community Kaggle did something nice and sweet as industry-wide survey sharing interesting and valuable information on data scientists from around the globe. More than 16 000 data scientists, analysts, experts, and statisticians joined the Kaggle survey which is full of interesting insights. Among the most important is the fact that 3 of every 4 participants rely on Python, followed by R and SQL and the logistic regression is the most commonly used data science method, followed by decision trees and random forests.
The biggest problem that data scientists are facing in their job is dirty data. Kaggle founder & CEO Anthony Goldbloom told The Verge that data cleaning is a much higher proportion of data science than an outsider would expect. He is adding that training models is less than 10% of the overall amount of work done by data scientist.
Most of the participants in the survey have Master degree. The best-paid data scientists and experts most likely have a doctoral degree, even though in such lucrative positions are professionals with college or professional degree.
Unsurprisingly, dirty data is the biggest problem faced by Data Analysts & Scientists. Almost half of the survey participants are stating this. One of every 4 said that the result of their work was not used by the decision makers, which is a pity since a lot of talent, knowledge, efforts and valuable resources are invested in any data science solution. More than 30% also says that the lack of clear question to answer is also among the burdens in their work. One of every five participants states explaining data science to others as a significant problem, clearly displaying that professionals should be educated on what data analytics actually is.
30 years old is the average age of the Kaggle survey, but this value varies between countries. For instance, the average respondent from India is 9 years younger than his Australian fellow expert.
It is a common belief that data scientists are among the best-paid professionals with STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) background. Well, they are not eager to share data on their own salary, since this question received less than 4 000 anonymous responses out of more than 16 000 participants. The average annual paycheck for a data science professional is $55 441, there are significant variations based on countries and experience. For instance, the average salary in the US is doubling this number, while in India it is about $11 000 a year or 10 times less.