The representation of people of color in the field of data science

The reason for my interest in this topic is because I myself I am a person of color who works as a data scientist. I decided that I would do a analysis on the current state of affairs using the data set provided by Stack Overflow, who on a yearly bases publish a survey about the developer community about everything from the level of satisfaction to where they live. I narrowed my data set down to people who were not white or of European descent, as well as Data Scientists, Machine Learning Specialist, Data Analysts or Business Analysts.

Geographic

Countries with the highest number of Data Scientists, Machine learning specialists, Business Analysts or Data Analysts

In the picture above you can see that India are at the forefront with 40 % for the rolls stated above, with United States coming in second with around 25 %. There’s a significant drop for the countries who came in 3rd and 4th, who are both sitting well below 10%. It would’ve been expected that countries where people of colour are not the minority, would’ve followed India but it is not the case. This could be due to the data set being skewed because people in these countries were unaware of the survey, or that not many people in these fields answered the survey.

Demographic

What is the age of most Data Scientists, Machine learning specialists, Business Analysts or Data Analysts?

The age group which has the largest number percentage of people in the field are 26 years old. Which isn’t surprising when taking into consideration the age of the field and it’s boom and recent years, this is further backed up by the fact that most of the people in the field are between the ages of 21 and 31.

Highest Level of Formal Education for Data Scientists, Machine learning specialists, Business Analysts or Data Analysts

In the graph below we can see that majority of the people who took part in the survey have a masters degree or a bachelors degree followed by PhD holders. I have myself have B.Sc in Mathematics and understand the challenges that come with succeeding in this field as well as the knowledge needed. Therefore it makes sense that the large majority have degree of some kind, although it is possible to make it without one in the world we live in today.

Industrial

How many years of experience do Data Scientists, Machine learning specialists, Business Analysts or Data Analysts have?

By looking at the we can see that majority of people have experience of at least 5 years, with only a small percentage that have been coding for less than 1 year or more than 50 years. This again ties in to age of the field and it’s recent boom in years, due to the amount of value these people can add to a business because of their ability help a company make calculated decisions.

Summary

The were few surprises with the results we got, but this could be due to the data set and not a true reflection of the current state of things. In coming years it would be nice to repeat this study and see how things have changed, hopefully we see more people in the field in countries we were aren’t the minorities.

If you want to see my process you can view my jupyter notebook here.