The document provides an overview of what it means to be a data scientist. It defines data scientists as those who gather, clean, explore, model, and interpret data, blending skills in hacking, statistics, and machine learning. Effective data scientists also have strong soft skills like domain knowledge, problem solving ability, and being able to communicate insights visually. The document contrasts the roles of data science and data engineering, noting that data engineering focuses more on data ingestion, integration, and preparation pipelines, while data science solves problems by analyzing patterns in data. It provides tips for getting started in data science, emphasizing learning domains of interest, business needs, mathematics, programming, and big data technologies.