Physicists have a strong mathematical background, computing skills, and come
from a discipline in which survival depends on getting the most from the data.
They have to think about the big picture, the big problem. When you've just
spent a lot of grant money generating data, you can't just throw the data out if
it isn't as clean as you'd like. You have to make it tell its story. You need
some creativity for when the story the data is telling isn't what you think it's
telling.