Rexer Analytics Data Science Survey
2016 Oct 05Some interesting highlights.
• SURVEY & PARTICIPANTS: 59-item online survey conducted in 2015. Participants: 1,220 analytic professionals from 72 countries. This is the 7th survey in this ongoing research program. • CORE ALGORITHM TRIAD: Regression, Decision Trees, and Cluster analysis remain the most commonly used algorithms in the field. • THE ASCENDANCE OF R: 76% of respondents report using R. This is up dramatically from just 23% in 2007. More than a third of respondents (36%) identify R as their primary tool. • JOB SATISFACTION: Job satisfaction in the field remains high, but has slipped since the 2013 survey. A number of factors predict Data Scientist job satisfaction levels. • DEPLOYMENT: Deployment continues to be a challenge for organizations, with less than two thirds of respondents indicating that their models are deployed most or all of the time. Getting organizational buy-in is the largest barrier to deployment, with real-time scoring and other technology issues also causing significant deployment problems. • TERMINOLOGY: The term “Data Scientist” has surged in popularity with over 30% of us describing ourselves as data scientists now compared to only 17% in 2013.