Data Science and PhD study

When I was applying for the PhD study I was thinking about it as opportunity to have chance to use all techniques, programming languages, methods, processes and technologies in practical way and delivery something reasonable which supports my professional growth and development. And it could stands as proof that I am really keen to learn and improve in this field and I have passion to do Data Science.

I was thinking about it again when I have read this article The Modern Data Nerd Isn’t as Nerdy as You Think on Wired about Data Nerds who are currently in charge of Data Science departments or in similar role and apply their experiences and knowledge and usually they do not have PhD. More over they do not have master degree, just bachelor degree. Or in case they have any kind of degree it is not from field close to Data Science.

"Every passion has its destiny."

- Billy Mills

What I have missed, when I need to study so much, I asked my self. Maybe nothing, maybe it's given by different study structure. They learned enough during bachelor study. Or it is given by different field which they studied. I don't know. I have my path and PhD study supports it.

Anyway three main things kept in my head, first is that I need to get my hands dirty to solve problem related to data. Second thing is no matter what degree I earned, data scientists are never done learning. And last one is about to not stay just in technical part of problem or solution, but mostly focus on business point of view.

I honestly wish and I believe that PhD study let me do this three things:

• I need to get my data, either find them or create them by experiment, pure and consolidate them and publish for future research.
• I have found and defined couple of cases which I want to solve and I need to discovery method which brings some results about it. 
• And it doesn't let me to stop with study, because I need to study related topics which I don't have experience with yet, but also I am studying topics which could be useful or at least I think they are.

Let see how optimistic I am after one year of PhD study. I am starting 2nd of September 2014, so I will do review of my study 1 year after or earlier maybe after I finish my dissertation minimum.