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For his Ph.D. in astrophysics, Chris Farrell spent five years mining data from a giant particle accelerator. Now, he spends his days analyzing ratings for Yelp Inc. YELP -0.90% 's online business-review site.
克里斯•法雷尔(Chris Farrell)在攻读天体物理学博士的五年期间从事巨型粒子加速器数据研究工作。如今，他的工作是分析商业点评网站Yelp上的点评。
Mr. Farrell, 28 years old, is a data scientist, a job title that barely existed three years ago but since has become one of the hottest corners of the high-tech labor market. Retailers, banks, heavy-equipment makers and matchmakers all want specialists to extract and interpret the explosion of data from Internet clicks, machines and smartphones, setting off a scramble to find or train them.
现年28岁的法雷尔是一名数据科学家。三年前，“数据科学家”这个职业头衔几乎还不存在，但后来逐渐成为高科技劳动力市场上最热门的职位之一。面对互联网点击、机器和智能手机产生的数据爆炸，零售商、银行、重型设备制造商以及媒介公司都想让专业人士来提取、解读大数据。这掀起了一场寻找或培训这方面人才的争夺战。
'People call them unicorns' because the combination of skills required is so rare, said Jonathan Goldman, who ran LinkedIn Corp.'s LNKD +0.66% data-science team that in 2007 developed the 'People You May Know' button, which five years later drove more than half of the invitations on the professional-networking platform.
LinkedIn Corp.数据科学团队的负责人乔纳森•戈德曼(Jonathan Goldman)说，人们把他们称作“独角兽”，因为这个职位所需要的综合技能是如此独特。该团队在2007年开发了“你可能认识的人”功能。在此后的五年里，LinkedIn这个人才网络平台上半数以上的“邀请”都是由该功能发起的。
Employers say the ideal candidate must have more than traditional market-research skills: the ability to find patterns in millions of pieces of data streaming in from different sources, to infer from those patterns how customers behave and to write statistical models that pinpoint behavioral triggers.
企业雇主们称，该职位的理想候选人不仅要拥有传统的市场调研技能，还需要具备以下能力：有能力从来自不同来源的上百万块数据中找出模式，然后通过这些模式来推断客户行为，找准消费行为的触发点并写出相关的统计模型。
At e-commerce site operator Etsy Inc., for instance, a biostatistics Ph.D. who spent years mining medical records for early signs of breast cancer now writes statistical models to figure out the terms people use when they search Etsy for a new fashion they saw on the street.
以在电子商务网站Etsy Inc.供职的数据科学家为例，一名生物统计学博士过去几年里通过挖掘医疗记录来研究乳腺癌的初期征兆，现在这名人员为Etsy编写统计模型，推断人们在Etsy上用什么样的词条来搜索自己在大街上看到的时尚新品。
At mobile-payments startup Square Inc., a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology who wrote statistical models to examine how people change their political beliefs now looks for behavioral patterns that would identify which merchants are more likely to have clients demand their money back.
在移动支付初创公司Square Inc.，一位编写统计模型、研究人们政治信仰如何变化的认知心理学博士，现在专门研究人们的行为模式，从而判断哪些零售商更有可能遇到顾客要求退货。
Another 28-year-old at Yelp, with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, turned his dissertation research on genome mapping into a product used by the company's advertising team. The same genome-mapping algorithm is now used to measure the effect on consumers when multiple small changes are made to online ads.
Yelp另一名28岁的应用数学博士把他的研究方向从基因图谱转向了该公司广告团队所用的一款产品。同一种基因演算法现在被用于估测对在线广告进行多项细微调整会给消费者带来什么样的影响。
'Academia is slow and only a few people see your work,' said Scott Clark, who designed the genome-mapping algorithm. 'At Yelp, I can be pushing out experiments that affect hundreds of millions of people. When I make a small change to the Yelp website, I have a bigger impact.'
这种基因演算法的设计者克拉克(Scott Clark)表示，做学术的过程很漫长，只有少数一些人能看到你的成果。他说：“在Yelp，我推进的实验可以影响上亿人。我对Yelp网站做一些小改动，影响却是巨大的。”
Some such experiments have raised alarms. Facebook Inc. FB -0.15% was recently in the spotlight for an experiment in which its data-science team sought to manipulate people's emotions by altering the content of their news feeds.
这类实验中也有一部分引发了担忧。Facebook Inc.近期就备受关注，因为其数据科学团队进行的一项实验试图通过修改信息流的内容来操控人们的情绪。
Christian Rudder, president of IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s OkCupid dating site, recently disclosed in a blog post that the site manipulated its feeds by inflating the likelihood that any two people were a match, to encourage them to use the service more.
IAC/InterActiveCorp.旗下约会网站OkCupid的总裁拉德(Christian Rudder)近期在一篇博客中披露，该网站通过夸大两位用户的匹配度来操控信息流，以此鼓励用户更多地使用其服务。
Mr. Goldman, who now heads a new data-science group at Intuit Inc., INTU +0.67% said employers go to great lengths to land top talent. They must be ready to extend an offer at a moment's notice, often within a day or two of interviewing a candidate, and be prepared to meet candidates at any hour of the day or night.
目前在财捷集团(Intuit Inc., INTU)带领一个新的数据科学团队的戈德曼说，雇主都在不遗余力地招募顶尖人才。他们必须准备好随时发出录用通知，通常是在面试一位候选人之后的一两天内，而且还要准备在白天或晚上的任何时候面见候选人。
While a six-figure starting salary might be common for someone coming straight out of a doctoral program, data scientists with just two years' experience can earn between $200,000 and $300,000 a year, according to recruiters.
招聘者说，对于一个刚获得博士学位的人来说，六位数的起薪可能很平常，同时只有两年工作经验的数据科学家就可以赚到20万至30万美元的年薪。
Anyone with 'data science' in his or her job title on a LinkedIn page is going to get '100 recruiter emails a day,' said Josh Sullivan, who leads a 500-person data-science group at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. BAH +0.86% To woo candidates, Mr. Sullivan goes for a personal touch: sending handwritten letters and flying across the country to meet potential employees' spouses. He also sends care packages filled with chocolate, as well as books on academic topics such as statistics and computer science that he knows the recruit is interested in.
博思艾伦咨询控股公司(Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp.)的沙利文(Josh Sullivan)说，任何人，只要其LinkedIn页面上的职务名称有“数据科学”的字眼，每天将会收到100位招聘者的电子邮件。沙利文目前在博思艾伦率领一个500人的数据科学团队。为了吸引候选人，沙利文会使用私人接触的方式：发出手写信件，乘飞机与潜在雇员的配偶见面。他还会寄送装满巧克力的爱心包裹以及学术书籍，比如他知道受聘者感兴趣的统计和计算机科学方面的书籍。
