Understanding the Path: How to Become a Data Scientist After Completing High School(12th)

Data Science has emerged as that one field that fuels and empowers the rest of the industries with improved performance and value information. Choosing a data science career in a time when the world is witnessing an unprecedented technological growth, would make you a highly in-demand professional. Several data science course opportunities have come about with enterprises increasingly becoming aware of the importance and the transformative impact of data science. So if you are one of those aspiring individuals and interested in learning how to become a data scientist, this blog will give you detailed information about building a data science career right after your 12th standard.

How to become a data scientist?

Becoming a data scientist involves several steps and strategic planning of career path. Data Scientists are capable of improving our lives and how we work and help us make better decisions. Hence, to become a data scientist, it is essential to develop diverse skills from technical to analytical to interpersonal skills. 

The first step to learn about how to become a data scientist is to acquaint yourself with what the data scientist job entails. One must have an elaborate and comprehensive knowledge of the roles and responsibilities of a data scientist. The next step is to attain all the necessary skills and knowledge a data scientist requires. 

What do data scientists do?

The roles of the data scientists expanse across extracting, analysing and interpreting data to draw valuable insights and enable strategic decisions. Their job includes collecting and cleaning data from various sources and probing data analysis to detect patterns and develop predictive models applying machine learning and statistical techniques. Data scientists are pivotal in feature engineering, evaluating models, and using those models into production. A data scientist's analytic aptitude is crucial for transforming data into insights, which is key for all industries and businesses for optimizing operations, improving products and attaining overall growth and success. 

Skills necessary to become a data scientist after 12 or Intermediate level education

The career path to become a data scientist after 12 standard involves strategic planning and accumulating skills and knowledge. So what are the skills necessary for a data scientist? Let us explore the varied skills critical for becoming a data scientist.

Data Visualization: A data scientist must be skilled in transforming the data and findings into a comprehensible and visually appealing graphics. One must be conversant with several data visualization tools like Power BI, Tableau, etc. 

Machine Learning: The modern data science landscape demands knowledge of applying machine learning algorithms to generate prediction outcomes and detect patterns in the data. 

Communication: A data scientist must have the skills to translate complicate data findings into a clear and actionable insights easily comprehensible by both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Programming Languages: Data scientists must be proficient at programming languages as they are crucial for manipulating data, analysing statistical data and machine learning. 

Mathematics, Statistics and Probability: Another crucial skill for a data scientist is statistics and probability. A strong foundation in these skills is crucial for analysing large data sets and understanding distributions, and to apply statistical tests and models. Linear Algebra, Calculus and Optimization are the crucial mathematics necessary for machine learning models and algorithms. 

Data Wrangling: Another essential skill to become a data scientist after 12 is data wrangling that entails cleaning, structuring and improving raw data into a useful and desirable format for data analytics. A data scientist must also know how to handle missing values, outliers and combining datasets. 

Deep Learning: The data science tasks of recognizing and other natural language processing tasks requires in-depth knowledge of deep learning frameworks and neural networks. 

Database management: To become a data scientist after 12, it will be of great help if you develop knowledge of databases like SQL and NoSQL which are key for data science tasks such as storing, querying and efficient data management.

Besides these technical data-science must have skills, your quest on how to become a data scientist must also include developing the soft skills needed for the profession. A data scientist aspirant must build excellent communication skills coupled with curiosity.  One must be curious to ask questions, interested in exploring data to detect hidden patterns, and have a desire to be committed to a continuous learning process and discovering innovative methods and techniques. 

The best way to begin attaining these skills is to enrol in a data science course. Through a well-structured and formal programme, an individual gets to learn all these skills necessary for a data scientist. You may begin with a basic foundational data science course that will train you in all the fundamental concepts and also provide you with hands-on learning experience.