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What Does It Mean To Be a Data Scientist?
Nerval's Lobster writes What is a data scientist? "To be honest, I often don't tell people I am a data scientist," writes Simon Hughes, chief data scientist of the Dice Data Science Team. "It's not that I don't enjoy my job (I do!) nor that I'm not proud of what we've achieved (I am); it's just that most people don't really understand what you mean when you say you're a data scientist, or they assume it's some fancy jargon for something else." So how do Simon and his team define "data scientist"? In this blog posting, he breaks it down along several lines: solid programming skills, a scientific mindset, and the ability to use tools are just for starters. A data scientist also needs to be a polymath with strong math skills. "All good scientists are skeptics at heart; they require strong empirical evidence to be convinced about a theory," he writes. "Likewise, as a data scientist, I've learned to be suspicious of models that are too accurate, or individual variables that are too predictive." His points are good to keep in mind right now, with everybody throwing around buzzwords like "Big Data" without fully realizing what they mean.
Without sociology skills (my blog) on a data science team, hypothesis formation and ability to model clients will suffer. It would seem particularly important for a people-focused company like Dice.com.
But there's a big difference between a scientist and a statistician. A scientist pokes around and discovers new theories or mathematical models (often out of thin air). A statistician OTOH, like an engineer, simply applies the theories of scientists to accomplish real world usable things like pie charts and bar graphs.
So unless this guy is discovering or testing new theories, he's not a scientist. He's just a statistician.