Cloudera Introduces Data Science Certification

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 26 — Cloudera, the leader in enterprise analytic data management powered by Apache Hadoop, today announced the industry’s first hands-on data science certification, called Cloudera Certified Professional: Data Scientist (CCP: DS). Comprised of a Data Science Essentials exam, a twice-annual Data Science Challenge, and several preparatory and enablement resources, Cloudera’s data scientist certification program helps developers, analysts, statisticians, and engineers get experience with relevant big data tools and techniques and validate their abilities while helping prospective employers identify elite, highly skilled data scientists. The next Cloudera Data Science Challenge begins March 31, 2014.

Industry Faces Shortage of Qualified Data Scientists

Enterprises are increasingly storing massive amounts of data in Hadoop to streamline the path to actionable insights, develop advanced analytics models, and build big data tools that were previously unattainable for most organizations. As a result, the demand for data scientists is at an all-time high. Data scientists possess a rare combination of engineering capabilities, statistical skills, and subject matter expertise that is difficult to find. Job openings for data scientists far outpace the limited supply of these highly in-demand workers, and the skills gap is widening. The situation is complicated by the fact that there has historically not been a clearly established skill set or university degree that an individual could acquire to qualify as a data scientist. Companies seeking to hire their first data scientists often have little idea what credentials to look for in a candidate.

Cloudera Addresses Demand for Data Scientists Through Training and Certification

As the global leader in Hadoop training and professional certification, Cloudera is addressing the widespread industry need for data scientists with its new CCP:DS certification. Designed and led by Cloudera’s own elite team of data scientists, the CCP:DS program helps aspiring data scientists develop and prove out the skills they need to succeed with real-world enterprise data.

In addition to the certification exam, the program includes an optional three-day Introduction to Data Science course focused on teaching data professionals to build machine learning models and implement complex recommender systems with Hadoop as a platform using industry-standard tools like Python and Apache Mahout. Cloudera also offers a 60-question Data Science Essentials Practice Test for candidates to self-assess their exam-readiness, and a free Data Science Challenge Solution Kit consisting of a live data set, a step-by-step tutorial, and a detailed explanation of the processes required to arrive at the correct outcomes for real-world data science questions focused on classification, clustering, and collaborative filtering of web analytics. 

Once candidates have passed the Data Science Essentials exam, they must then successfully complete a Cloudera Data Science Challenge, offered twice annually. By passing Cloudera’s examination and live-data challenge, CCP:DS-credentialed individuals have demonstrated their ability to work with big data and build market-relevant data science models under real-world conditions at the very highest level. Cloudera Certified Professional: Data Scientist is the world’s only certification that provides evidence of true experience and expertise developing a production-ready data science solution that is peer-evaluated for accuracy, scalability, and robustness.

Introducing the Data Science Challenge: Detecting Anomalies in Medicare Claims

Cloudera’s second Data Science Challenge opens on March 31, 2014. Participants will have three months to complete the challenge. Designed by Cloudera’s Director of Data Science, Sean Owen, the Data Science Challenge asks aspiring data scientists to detect possible errors and anomalies in Medicare claims using a massive set of anonymized healthcare data. Successful challengers will be able to answer questions, including:

• Which medical procedures have the highest relative variance in cost?
• Which three providers had the highest average amount claimed for the largest number of procedures?
• Based on amount and type of procedures claimed, which three providers and regions are least like the others?
• Identify 10,000 patients that seem most likely to need review for possible errors or anomalies. Describe some common features in these patients.

To learn more about the Data Science Challenge or to register, please visit: http://cloudera.com/content/cloudera/en/training/certification/ccp-ds/challenge/register.html