[tweetmeme source=”atripathy” only_single=false] Ken Rona tweeted earlier today about a subject which stuck a chord. He was writing about the difference between a business analyst and data analyst (or data scientist as they are increasingly called). I wanted to expand on the idea as It is important to distinguish between the two roles. I have seen a lot of confusion around the definitions and some executives thinking they are one and the same and others who believe they are totally different. The truth is probably somewhere in between. Here is my attempt at comparing along the key skill set dimensions:
Business Analyst | Data Scientist | |
Business domain knowledge | Expertise in industry domain | Very good working knowledge of industry domain |
Data handling skills |
Ability to handle multiple CSV files and import them into Access or Excel for analysis | Ability to write SQL queries to extract data from databases and join multiple datasets together |
Analytics skills | Knowledge of simple business statistics(statistical significance, sampling), Able to use statistics functions in Excel | Proficiency in advanced mathematics/statistics (regressions, optimization, clustering analysis etc.) |
Insight presentation skills | Storytelling skills using PowerPoint | Storytelling skills using information visualization and PowerPoint |
Problem solving skills |
Proficiency in hypotheses driven approach is good to have | Proficiency in hypotheses driven approach is must have |
Tools | Access, Excel, PowerPoint etc | MS SQL, Oracle, Hadoop, SQL SAS, SPSS, Excel, R, Tableau etc |
I think this is a good starting point but can be refined further. Feedback/comments are welcome.
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Hi Amaresh,
Good comparison and very thoughtful insights into the data scientist role
Very hard to find some guy who is an industry expert (working knowlegde), an IT Guy and knows mathematics/Statistics.
How about providing a tool to the industry expert abstracting the complexity of later 2 from him
Regards
Sid
Hey Amresh,
Very interesting view. I think the distinction between data scientists and business analyst are sometime blurry in organizations that are lean and mean. I am a business analyst but have skills of data scientists too. My personal view is that industry knowledge is key for both data scientists and business analysts.
Often analysis goes awry when business logic is not sound to begin with…
But overall the distinction you have laid out makes sense particulary to people who work in this field.
Hope you are doing well
-Shreejesh (your REC Mate)
seems like business analyst will be washed out by data scientists