As a Data Scientist, how do you employ statistics to analyze data and develop business recommendations?

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Data Scientists use a variety of tools, statistics being one of the most used and commonly employed. An interviewer will ask this question early in the interview to set the stage, learn more about your skills and experience, and guide you toward other, more specific questions. Keep this in mind when responding to this question because it will provide you with the opportunity to move the interview in a direction that you are comfortable with and can easily address.

"Statistics are probably one of the strongest tools a Data Scientist has in their arsenal. They help us to identify patterns, find hidden insights, and quickly analyze large data sets. Statistics provide information about consumer behavior, interests, engagement, and other aspects of the shopping and purchase process. They also allow for the quick development of models that validate assumptions and inferences."

"Of all the tools I use in the process of analyzing data, statistics is my favorite. This is the most mature methodology in the field of data science and there are a great many programs at our disposal. Statistical analysis is a straight forward way to identify trends, confirm a hypothesis, expose hidden insights and develop models business users need to make intelligent decisions. Statistics can be used to narrow the focus of an analysis and provide the users with the exact information they are looking for."

Anonymous Answer

"To explain in simple words statistics is the mathematical tool to perform analysis and data presentation. As a data scientist and data analyst, I have frequently used statistics invalidating the hypothesis, finding trends, identifying the correlation and associations between factors, looking for hidden insights, describing data with the help of 5 point summary, etc."