Top 7 Data Science Experts to Follow on LinkedIn

LinkedIn as a publishing platform has lofty aspirations. Already it supplements, or replaces for some, what a professional blog would normally do.

Audience building on the platform comes naturally if you have a prominent position in your field and can tell a story. In data science, storytelling plays a lead part in its practice, so naturally LinkedIn is flush with quality reads. But where to begin?

Start Here to Build a Great Data Science LinkedIn Feed

A highly qualified voice in data science academics, Tom Davenport (Harvard, Deloitte, MIT) wrote the book on the practice, 15 of them actually. Add to that 100+ articles in journals or published by a spectrum of household-name institutions. Naturally, he’s activly publishing insights from his profile. Precision medicine: His latest examines theory on healthcare applications for ongoing, hyper-personalized care.

If only Dr. Ian Malcolm had a LinkedIn Profile. Thankfully we have Vincent Granville in real life. Dr. Granville’s work is algorithm heavy, but he briefs his scholarly offerings on LinkedIn with accessible narrative and visualizations. Mathematician? Chaotician! Granville’s recent article discusses the numeric chaos behind encryption methods, and randomness in quantum algorithms.

For privacy and data topics, learn from Jules Polonetsky, a preeminent digital security executive from the first wave of dot-com. The former security chief at AOL heads a Washington, DC think tank. High axis: Subject matter touches the highest level of how data science is applied into public policy, lately, he’s been talking about the EU Privacy Shield.

Perhaps the best hiring manager posts belong to Gartner’s Andriy Burkov, who writes enviable headlines like, How to Be a Data Scientist in One Week. Hooked? That’s one of several engaging topics that Burkov broaches on his regular LinkedIn offerings. They run the gamut from highly conceptual, to nitty gritty applied technology in the field.

The HR niche, and everyone in Silicon Valley, reads Vin Vashishta to keep current on AI and deep learning careers. Currently the founder of the SaaS BI solution V-Squared, Vin has a tech recruitment background, which he taps for some valuable shares on LinkedIn. Wish we published this: Most recently, he deconstructs HR screening filters candidates can use when landing data science jobs. Highly recommended.

Another great jobs-related voice in data science is Carla Gentry from Talent Analytics. Her career background in data analytics focuses on making actionable business sense out of large sets of numbers. A-list feed: Her original posts tapered off somewhat this year, but she curates with the best--showcasing code-related breakthroughs, tutorials, and data scientist musings on existentialism. A supplement to have if you’re interested in data science careers.

Bueller? Not all greats publish on LinkedIn. Inventor of Hadoop, Doug Cutting, now the president of Cloudera, has a quiet profile. You won’t find R Project co-founder Ross Ikaha on LinkedIn, but founding partner Robert Gentlemen is there--but doesn’t publish on the platform. Nate Silver, founder of fivethirtyeight, doesn’t dig the term data science, and prefers to publish posts on statistics for ESPN.