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SALT LAKE CITY — If you want job security, try becoming a data scientist.
Google, Facebook and LinkedIn are grabbing up data scientists as quickly as they can find them. But University of Utah assistant computer science professor Miriah Meyer says there are very few people out there with these skill sets.
A data scientist is able to take raw data and tables of numbers, and make it visual, interesting and easy to understand
"These are people with basic computational skills, who know how to process data," Meyer said. "People who have some basic statistical skills, so once you get that data, you can pull out interesting patterns, and then put that visualization on top, which is how can we not only explore that data, but also communicate something about it to someone else."
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The class of 2012 is leaving college with something that many graduates since the start of the Great Recession have lacked: jobs.Meyer says she is constantly seeing advertisements for data scientist-types of jobs. She says every industry today needs data visualization, from healthcare and music to science and technology.
"Something like Foursquare," Meyer said. "I don't even have to call my friends, I can just see where they are. That's data."
It may not sound sexy, but one of the hottest jobs of this day.
"Whatever your passion is, whether it's snowboarding or film or biology, you can find a place to work in that space as a data scientist."
