Data Scientists Need Their Own GitHub. Here are Four of the Best Options

Imagine if a company’s three highly valued data scientists can happily work together without duplicating each other’s efforts and can easily call up the ingredients and results of each other’s previous work.That day has come. As the data scientist arms race continues, data scientists might want to join forces. Crazy idea, right?

Two San Francisco startups — Domino Data Lab and Sense — have emerged recently with software to let data scientists collaborate on multiple projects. In a way, it’s like code storehouse GitHub for the data science world. A Montreal startup named Plot.ly has been talking about the same themes, but it brings a more social twist.

Another startup, Mode Analytics, is building software for data analysts to ask questions of data without duplicating previous efforts. And at least one more mature software vendor, Alpine Data Labs, has been adding features to help many colleagues in a company apply algorithms to code on one central hub. And this isn’t just technology for technology’s sake. People are using the software...