Which are the 4 most important data science certificates?

Certifications are one of the most common and quick paths for this role, Every program, or industry has some of their certificate programs that help the individual to have a competitive edge. But let’s just talk about data science today. The data science field is so vast and so diverse that there are a wide array of certificate programs available for a person to add to their skill sets. But for today let's just stick to only four of them. 

But hey, don’t go by the number, the certificates that I have mentioned here are of high value and will definitely add a lot of value to your CV. So let us begin with our journey into this:

#1  SAS Advanced Analytics Professional Certification: I guess the name of the SAS is enough to make a great impact. So this is an expert-level program and the cost is almost  $1,295/year. You need to clear 5 exams related to the course to get yourself certified in the SAS. A wide range of topics is covered in this program which are  statistics, visual analytics, logistic regression, Hadoop basics, data mining, and more. Wait, one more thing, make sure to have at least 6 months of programming experience before you enrol on this course. 

#2  DASCA: Senior Data Scientist: This one is also an expert-level program, which may expire after a duration of 5 years. This program is a little bit more economical than the previous one. There is only one certification exam, so that means that you have a higher chance to get certified on your first attempt at the exam. The topics that this course covers are data science for business stakeholders, pan-organizational support, and big data analytics. But this program has its own prerequisites, that the candidate should have at least 5 years of industry experience. 

#3  Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist Associate: This one is also an expert-level program by none other than Microsoft. If implementing and running machine learning workloads intrigues you, then this is the course you should go for this program as you will not only be doing what you like, but you will also have the Microsoft certification in your CV. The following are the topics that you will be taught in this program AI solutions, NLP, and machine learning.

#4 Harvard’s Data Science Professional Certificate: I felt like I added a lot of expert-level certifications, so here is a beginner-level certification that fresher or non-professionals can add to their skill set, to have a great and huge jumpstart in their career, and what would be better than the certificate from the Harvard University. In this program, you will go through R and machine learning, and that too from real-life case studies to give you practical exposure. 

What do you think is more important, the right skills, or just a certificate?