Important Skills for the Data Scientist

What are the important skills for a data scientist?

Most people would say the most important skills are data related. These skills are important. Extremely important. Without the interest or ability to analyze data, it would be hard to be a data scientist.

Many would argue technology skills are important. Data scientists need to be able to use many different types of systems and technologies to analyze, visualize and report on data analysis.

Others would argue that software development skills are important.  Data scientists spend a good deal of time writing code of some sort to help sort, organization, analyze and visualize data.

A few people might argue that data scientists need to be good data administrators. Data must be stored somewhere, so it makes sense that data scientists should have a good feel for managing data.

The skills listed above are the ‘hard’ skills that data scientists need. They are all important and they are all necessary for data scientists to master.

But what about the soft skills?

What about the ability to communicate both in writing and verbally? What about the interpersonal skills needed to discuss business problems and challenges?    How about the ability to research the business and dive into how the business does what it does?

Aren’t those skills important too?

I think they are. What do do you think?