Regression vs Curve Fitting - Technical Diversity in Data Science Teams

Modern enterprise data science teams are technically diverse. The members of these teams differ in their education levels (bachelors, masters, PhD), majors (CS, statistics, natural sciences), prior work experiences (advertising, actuaries, finance, experimental physics) and used tools (Excel, SAS, R, Python, Java). One is more likely to find biology or computational neuroscience majors in data science teams today than in actuarial or financial firms of the past. But there is a more subtle difference than the ones listed above: team members with quantitative backgrounds may differ in exposure to the same set of concepts. Take the example of regression. Both engineering and statistics departments devote a portion of their curriculum to teaching line fitting.