Quant in the Real World: A Data Apprenticeship

Harvard HGSE

The practice of data analysis draws on skills learned in a statistics class, but also requires skills, knowledge, and attitudes which are not typically taught in the classroom. Data analysts must work with clients or supervisors to understand the goal of an analysis. They must take vague objectives and turn them into research questions that can be answered using quantitative methods. They must wrangle and clean messy datasets. And perhaps most challenging of all, they must develop good…