Written By: Ramakrushna

Right now, I feels like everyone is doing AI. Every job post, every resume, every course—it’s all about LLMs, transformers, deep learning.

For entry-level data scientists? It’s making things worse. What and which one to choose.

Here’s the truth: If you’re trying to break into data science, focusing on AI first is a waste of time. Before you even think about deep learning or generative AI, you need to master the foundations—because most entry-level data scientist roles don’t require AI at all.

1 - Data Analytics

Your first job as a data scientist will require you to work with data —not training a GPT-4 model -> 80% of your job will be data cleaning, transformation, and analysis.

✅  SQL – Extract, manipulate, and analyze structured data efficiently.

✅  Python (Pandas/Numpy) – Perform data wrangling, preprocessing, and numerical computations.

✅  Data Visualization – Use tools like Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Tableau to communicate insights clearly.

If you can’t take raw data, clean it, and extract meaningful insights, you’re not ready for machine learning yet.

2 - Understand Basic Machine Learning

Instead of jumping into deep learning, start with:

✅  Regression Models – Learn Linear Regression for predicting numerical values and Logistic Regression for classification problems.

✅  Tree-Based Models – Understand how Decision Trees, Random Forest, and XGBoost can handle complex patterns in data.