Preliminary Results for Our State of Machine Learning Survey

We recently shared a survey about the current state of machine learning in order to learn more about how practicing data scientists use machine learning, what hurdles they’re seeing in their organization, and what tools they’re using. While we’re still looking for more responses to ensure we get a representative number, we’d like to share some of the initial responses.

Q1: What is your primary coding language?

To the surprise of no one, the leading programming language is Python. This language has been universally hailed as the go-to for anything data science and AI, with even those in data analytics starting to make the switch. What did surprise us is how low R is ranking so far. Java ranking high shouldn’t be a surprise, as many other disciplines use it, so those with a different background likely used it there.

Q3: What areas of machine learning are you interested in learning more about, potentially for training?

Machine learning isn’t the definitive end result for the field. As the chart shows, many machine learning engineers are interested in learning more about reinforcement learning, deep learning, data engineering, and big data analytics. No area was noticeably higher or lower than others, showing there’s a lot of room for growth in different areas of machine learning.

Q4: Which of these related skills in machine learning are important to you?

Under the machine learning umbrella, there are a number of supplementary skills that one can learn. It didn’t surprise us that soft skills like data visualization and communication skills are popular, as those are needed to communicate with decision-makers and other stakeholders. The same goes for statistics/math and workflows/pipelines, as those are the core skills needed to even get started with machine learning. 

Conclusion

While we’re still waiting for more responses to the machine learning survey, these answers so far have given us great insight into our community and what’s important to you. Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for a more comprehensive analysis of the complete machine learning survey. In the meantime, you can take the survey here for a chance to win a free ticket to ODSC West this year.

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