Hilary Mason, the famed Data Scientist in Residence with Accel Partners, discussed the evolution of data science in the past four years with theCUBE co-hosts Dave Vellante and John Furrier, live at #BigDataNYC 2013 in New York.

Asked what has changed in the past four years in data, Mason said “it is no longer a surprising or aggressive statement to say data is important. On the technology side we have seen a lot of new tools” and advancements. “I think it’s growing up.”

Explaining her role with Accel Partners, Mason said she worked with the portfolio companies and determined what their current challenges are. “Each company has the same set of challenges,” she said, “they know they have this data, but there’s still a friction.”

On the technology side there are infrastructure issues to tackle, on the organizational side, finding, hiring and training people is the main challenge. “Companies are built on traditional relational data store and now they have to build something new,” Mason noted.

“I am really excited by the opportunity that we have now to make data useful for people in the context in which we live our life,” Mason stated. “I am excited about things that take complex sets of data and make it easy to understand.”

Data science helps with the question “can I understand something about the world as the whole from the this data that helps me as an individual?”

How to train a data scientist

Asked to comment on the current trends in training new data scientists, Mason said there will never be too many people who can make data analysis-based decisions. Data scientists require “a communication ability and domain knowledge. It is about code and engineering, someone handing you a messy data set and you can get something out of it.”

Another important aspect is a business perspective on data, but communication, a “story telling ability is the hardest to find in candidates.”

• Data artistry

Asked to comment on the concept of data artistry, Mason said “the art side is intrinsic to the problem area. The ability of someone who is good at working with data is asking the right question. That creative aspect is the hardest to find and to teach.

“Splunk is a great tool, it enables people to take something that would have been a lot of work,” and make data useful, Mason commented. “Most data science in the world is done in Excel,” she added

Asked about the most interesting startups out there, Mason said her favorite data product of all time was the iPhone App Dark Sky. “They take public weather data and your GPS location and give you a micro weather forecast for where you are standing.”