Your team is working on a project and is running into some issues. You need someone on the team who is able to solve problems in environments of uncertainty, can deal with failure, and has the math and data visualization skills needed to communicate the results with others so the issues can get resolved. What role would be most suited for this?

A data scientist combines strong statistical/mathematical grounding, programming ability, visualization proficiency, and comfort with experimentation and failure—allowing them to diagnose issues in uncertain environments and communicate findings clearly to diverse stakeholders.

B. Data engineers focus on data pipelines and infrastructure, not analytical problem-solving and visualization.
C. Citizen data scientists possess limited advanced math skills and handle simpler, tool-driven tasks.
D. Project managers coordinate scope, schedule, and resources but lack deep analytic expertise.

1. Harvard Business Review, “The Data Scientist: A Sexiest Job of the 21st Century,” Oct 2012, para. 6-7.

2. UC Berkeley Data Science Course (DS100), Lecture 1 “What is a Data Scientist?”, 2023, slides 8-9.