Blog

Big Data "The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century"

Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian on Statistics and Data (Big Data)
“I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I'm joking, but who would've guessed that computer engineers would've been the sexy job of the 1990s?” January 2009

Check out the full article

Indeed Varian wasn’t joking, actually up to this date “The shortage of data scientists is becoming a serious constraint in some sectors.” Read more

Dr. Kirk Borne, Data Scientist. Data Mining Specialist. Astrophysicist, Space Scientist. Whom I first met at George Mason University while I was taking his “Scientific Database” graduate level course, and currently he is Principal Data Scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton published a very interesting article “Data Science Declaration” January 2015.

In his well written and articulated article, Dr. Borne highlights the digital data revolution, the number of job announcements and open positions for data scientists which comes with well-paid salaries and hiring bonuses. Further the article call attention to how many of the job applicants (in general) that they lack in fundamental data scientist skills in statistics, programming, computational literacy, data literacy, data management, data handling, databases, machine learning, data mining, visualization, communications, scientific curiosity, some science training, plus some domain expertise. Candidates have only one of the requisite skills (software engineering, or programming, or SQL, or database administration) while simultaneously lacking the above mentioned key Data Science skill areas.

even though we don't expect one single person to have all of these talents, it is disappointing when "data scientist" job applicants have only one of the requisite skills (software engineering, or programming, or SQL, or database administration) while simultaneously lacking in any of the key Data Science skill areas (statistics, machine learning, data literacy,...) Dr. Kirk Borne

Check out the full article for more, it’s an interesting read.

Follow Dr. Kirk Borne

Why \(\LaTeX \) !?


There are a couple of softwares (LibreOffice, OpenOffice, NeoOffice…) that perform most of the basic (even advanced) tasks what Microsoft office is used for and they are free of charge. For the most part these packages are compatible with a lot more systems; including Windows, OS X, and Linux, while Microsoft Office's newest version is restricted to just Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. Above and beyond, it’s not about which one is “better” or “more feature filled” rather it’s about whether your work requires what Microsoft has to offer, or if you can get by with something free and save your money, the choice is open-ended. However, for as long as folks are using MS word within academia and research institutions, LaTeX has a lot to offer than MS office.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I'm learning all the time, and the learning process is well worth than spending $100-$250 for Microsoft office suit. I have nothing against Microsoft office but I personally think it’s ridiculously expensive, and in fact the software should be included with Windows for free (just personal opinion). And this blog serves as just a “memo” than a tutorial for LaTeX. There are various tutorial (well written and easy to follow):

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done. Scott Adams

You should also consider this LaTeX resume templets, whether you are a new grad looking for a new job or just brushing up your resume.

Check out Deedy Resume/CV a one page, two asymmetric column resume template in XeTeX that caters to an undergraduate Computer Science student.