“In God we trust, all others must bring data.” – W.Edwards Deming

Many top corporates in the current world, be it Apple or Microsoft or Facebook, or Google, are all running behind data. Data, in the present day, is the solution to many big business issues and challenges. This dealing with data to extract meaningful information is now a completely different domain, which we call “Data Science”. Then what comes to our mind is What exactly is Data Science?

As per Wikipedia, Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data and apply knowledge and actionable insights from data across a broad range of application domains. In simple terms, it is what I have already mentioned, deriving meaningful insights from Data.

Data Science has been a revolution for mankind in the past decade. Let us consider the example of the Global COVID 19 pandemic which we are facing now, we came across various news that “we will achieve the peak of Covid cases in June/July, etc.”, these are all calculations done through analyzing the data and using statistical methods to derive the same. The impact of Data Science has been, we can say exponential on most of the sectors like Retail, Hospital, Banking & Financials, Telecom, Pharma, etc. All the ideas which we see in Hollywood sci-fi movies are turned into reality through data science. This study of data science is the secret sauce of the future and Artificial Intelligence.

Let us look into this practically considering few examples: We all are nowadays purchasing our monthly grocery items from these modern format retail stores like the Big Bazaar, Reliance Fresh, D-Mart, Spencer’s, Spar, etc. We all have noticed that we get a message in our registered contact number with them in the next month regarding the offers and discounts and you can find in the message there must be products which you as an individual purchase the most. Not only this, we get such messages mostly from the last week of the present month to the first week of next month. This is because in a study it has been seen that the majority of India’s population gets salary during this period.

Telecom sector – a highly fragmented market in India with many key players – Jio, Vodafone India, BSNL, Airtel, etc. To sustain in such a highly fragmented market, a company needs to have some uniqueness, which we call in business terms as USP (Unique Selling Proposition). To have a uniqueness in their plans and offerings, companies study the call data of customers, depending on the usage of the customers, companies prepare the call, internet, and SMS plans. These are some practical examples, where data science is being used to derive meaningful information and make the business unit profitable.

Now the question arises, how are these data analyzed? Yes, nowadays these business units are equipping themselves with these data science professionals, who can analyze the data using various software like Advanced Excel, SPSS, R, Python, etc. There are many data visualization software also coming in like Tableau, which makes the representation of data very meaningful and useful for the data readers.

Those professionals who carry on these data analyses and derive information are commonly designated as “Data Analysts, Data Scientists, etc. Data Scientist already mentioned as the “Sexist Job of the 21^st century” by Harvard Business School offers a wide range of opportunities to excel in career and lucrative salary options.

We can look at the various career options in Data Science, qualifications required, top colleges in India offering the course, and how has been the ROI in my next blog.