Two professionals with different backgrounds that have so much in common and can create a new world of possibilities.
In 2012, a Harvard Business Review article referred to the data scientist as the “Sexiest Job of the 21st Century”, highlighting how hard was to find a professional with the appropriate skills to perform the necessary needs for the position.
Nearly seven years later, data scientists are starting to come forward in the market with a proposal that is challenging even for most experts in the area, to join two kinds of historically separate knowledge: the human and exact sciences, one being designed to understand the world of data mining, systems and technology, and the other to understand and predict behavior.
There is another kind of professional in the market who has been facing a similar challenge: associating knowledge obtained from large amounts of data with human behavior studies and ethnography. The research area, like many others, has been changing and evolving with time and the arrival of new technologies, and this evolution is both necessary and unavoidable.
Increasing contact
However, despite the similarities, those two professionals rarely connect with each other inside the companies or even work in neighboring areas. Why?
Normally the data science professional is based in the Information Technology department or similar areas related to exact sciences, while the researcher is more associated with the human sciences even though they can be very close to statistics.
The research world is as endless as the data world. Using multidisciplinary concepts, where people from different worlds with different expertise can make a complementary contribution, it is possible to join both professionals in the same team.
With both of them combined it is possible to create the most complete and complex analysis. It is possible to create many insights from research, about what people think, how they will react, groups formed by age, region, religion, and education along with the data scientist’s knowledge of big data analysis and number crunching, creating hypothesis that researchers can prove or challenge.
Understanding the behavior behind the words, understanding the behavior behind the data. That’s what we need to be able to generate better insights, having results flowing faster as the new world demands.
A winning team
With two kind of professionals working together, we can improve the broad view and awareness of the company and the business in general, in addition to the possible increase of the velocity of the information and knowledge, making it possible for the company to achieve new levels of competitivity and many other potentials.
You can be successful using only one technique of course, but definitely, you will find better results and better insights if you combine what you collect from data science with what you can get from research.
Understanding the behavior behind the words, understanding the behavior behind the data. That’s what we need to be able to generate better insights, having results flowing faster as the new world demands.
Data scientists and researchers working together can become a strong team to produce results that could be the closest you can get from the perfect advisor.
