Don’t Democratize Data Science

Every few years, some academic and professional field gets a lot of cachet in the popular imagination. Right now, that field is data science. As a result, a lot of people are looking to get into it. Add to that the news outlets calling data science sexy and various academic institutes promising to make a data scientist out of you in just a few months, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for disaster.

Of course, as a data scientist myself, I don’t think the problem lies in people choosing data science as a profession. If you’re interested in working with data, understanding business problems, grappling with math, and you love coding, you’re probably going to thrive in data science. You’ll get a lot of opportunities to use math and coding to develop innovative solutions to problems and will likely find the work rewarding. The main issue here is that the motivations people have for entering the field are often flawed.

For some, the appeal is money, while others like the way the title sounds.…