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Comment by jknoepfler | Hacker News Reader

A data scientist is an engineer.

Can you elaborate as to why and how? Im genuinely curious. :)

An engineer is a person who creates real world solutions to real world problems.

What matters is not how elegant your solution is, what matters is solving the problem. And doing it under cost and time constraints.

An engineer is first and foremost, a person focussed on the end goal, above all else.

Do data scientists do as engineers?

This definition of engineer is so broad as to be meaningless. There is no "fake world" with "fake world" problems, pretty much everyone is trying to create real world solutions to real world problems. Similarly most jobs are focused on the end goal. A data scientist job usually involves a mix of science and engineering.

My definition of "real world" problems are ones that people are willing to pay for. If nobody is willing to give you money for whatever it is that you are doing, then it probably isn't solving someone's actual problem.

The problem with this approach is that people pay much more money for limited gains they can exploit than for general gains that benefit everyone equally. Advancing academic knowledge provides gains distributed over a very large number of people, but the current system often does not efficiently allocate resources to this problem.

>There is no "fake world" with "fake world" problems

You've never met a number theorist.

> You've never met a number theorist.

And you've never met a cryptographer ;-)

"Mathematicians becoming data scientists..."

At best you're talking about a career change, at worst you're talking about a watered-down version of your intended career.

A watered down version of your career that pays 3 times as much, working on problems that will actually affect people's lives.

Oh yeah, you're going to change the world by figuring out who to market baby formula to, and that internet-connected toaster is a winner.

The money is good though, that's true.

The money is good because people are willing to pay. If the world needed more PHDs, then the world would pay them more. Thats how markets work. Supply and demand.

"Needs"

Not so much. "Wants" as "Thinks it needs", but even then, the amount of student debt suggests that neither of those are entirely true either.

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