Business Analyst v Data Scientist: Does anyone know the difference?

"Data is the new currency, and it's the medium of exchange between consumers and marketers." -- Lisa Utzschneider

I was in my managerial business analytics class today when the professor was outlining the different analytical hierarchy between analytical professionals and analytical amateurs. He described an analytical professional as a computer programmer, a semi-professional as a data scientist, finance/marketing as analytical amateurs and did not even mention the role of business analyst. But, he had it all wrong.

Computer programmers should not be in this hierarchy. While most data scientist and data analysts major in computer science in college, they don't inherently deal with data. The role of a computer programmer is to "write and test code that allows computer applications and software programs to function properly. They turn the program designs created by software developers and engineers into instructions that a computer can follow." They can create databases to store big data, but computer programmers don't query that data into actionable information. They could be classified as analytical amateurs, but they certainly are not analytical professionals.

Data scientist however do query data. Data scientists gather and organize large amounts of data to solve process and strategy problems in business and in other enterprises. "Data science is a lot more technical and hands-on, and data scientists are much more likely to have coding skills, machine learning expertise, an understanding of artificial intelligence, experience with predictive analytics, and mathematical modeling expertise." But does this make them analytical professionals? Personally I would classify them as analytical semi-professions as they decide what data is necessary to solve a given problem and pass it off to data/business analyst.

While data analysts and business analysts both use data, the primary difference lies in what they do with it. Data analyst is a more technical job function that gathers and analyses data to discover possible problem areas a company or process is facing. Business analyst are focused on solving those problems the business is facing and look at the data to devise a solution. Both of these groups should be classified as analytical professionals.

I disagree with my professor that marketing and finance professionals should be analytical amateurs. Data is essential to their job functions. While they don't need the technical database management knowledge, visualization and dashboarding creation is something they should become proficient in. This knowledge would make them analytical semi-professionals.

My ranking of Analytical Hierarchy

Analytical Professionals: Data Analyst & Business Analyst

Analytical Semi-Professionals: Marketing & Finance Teams

Analytical Amateurs: Computer Programmers