Become a Data Scientist: The Journey through Data Science and AI

With the increased need of many AI enthusiasts to adopt data science and machine learning techniques in their career path, one has to wonder what it takes for an individual to become a valuable resource and fill in the skill shortages we hear so much about. Andre Violante's answer: This is a tough question to definitively answer since each persons journey I to data science is different. I believe that overall the skills to be a data scientist (business acumen coding statistics) are more important that the degrees. I also see this sentiment echoed online on LinkedIn by many professionals and leaders. However, and it's a big "however", when you look at data science job descriptions many of them require or prefer grad school of either MS or PhD. So even though many people have good intentions with focusing on the skill, I still believe the higher level education at this point is very valuable and almost necessary to be considered unfortunately.