
“I need to hire a data scientist!”
We hear this call, urgent and animated, from Chief Information
Officers (CIOs) and Chief Technical Officers (CTOs) almost
every week. We understand. It’s easy to get excited about new
technology, especially when it promises a shortcut to those
most tantalizing of strategic objectives: innovation, competitive
advantage, and efficiency. Few fields have recently generated
such enthusiasm as data science, which broadly covers machine
learning, artificial intelligence, and big data. Much of this
eagerness is justified: the headline achievements have often
been startling.