What is a data scientist? If you ask the Harvard Business Review, it’s the “sexiest job of the 21st century.” If you ask a technologist interested in crunching data, they’ll tell you it’s a potentially lucrative, intellectually fulfilling career.

And if you ask a CEO, they’ll probably say that data scientists mean the difference between strategic success and failure. But how do you actually become one? At the most basic level, data scientists analyze massive datasets for insights that can change how companies operate and strategize. As terms, “data scientist” and “data science” are relatively new, first appearing a little over a decade ago (roughly around the time that “Big Data” emerged into the mainstream as a buzzword, which isn’t a coincidence).

Source: insights.dice.com