Over the course of the past half a decade, data science has emerged as one of the most important branches of study. Students from all over the world are scrambling for getting degrees on the subject. While students might have a question about what is data science and its importance in modern life daily, much of it is still wrapped in a bit of mystery.
It is regarded as one of the most important branches of study. Those who specialise in a data science course also find themselves in lucrative jobs. This article takes a deeper look at what data science is and how it can lead to a fruitful career. Many people wonder ‘what is data science?’ and this is a deeper exploration of data science that could be highly beneficial too many.
What is Data Science?
As everyone knows, data is necessary for making any intelligent decision for a wide variety of fields. Businesses, sports teams, election forecasting firms, financial firms and investors among others all need reliable data to conduct their work smoothly. It also developed from a field called Artificial intelligence.
There are thousands of data science jobs available these days. It is is only natural for many students to aspire for such jobs. We cannot discount the importance of the internet and we should note it that millions upon millions of useful data points are nowadays available online.
That data can help people in making intelligent decisions to boost their performance in various fields. However, just having access to reams of data will not help. The data needs to be crunched properly and one needs to find out patterns so it is possible to make predictive models. That is where data science comes in.
The basis of data science lies in statistics and working towards finding patterns in data. The aim of collecting an extensive amount of data is to break it down and then find out trends that can make predictions for the future. That is what investors, election forecasters, and even sports analysts do in their day jobs. However, to accomplish their job to the best of their abilities, they need able data scientists working for them.
What Data Scientists Do ?
They train data scientists to churn the data using a wide range of statistical tools and gleam actionable insights from the data. However, it should be pointed out that it is easier said than done. A data scientist is going to need to extract the data, process it and scrutinise his finding thoroughly. Once this is over, he is going to offer predictions from the data.
Seeing the future is perhaps one of the biggest advantages any business can have and data science allows them to have a semblance of an insight into the future. Hence, the findings from data scientists are so important for businesses these days. Its demand for these professionals has only gone up in the past years. Used professionals could also consider going for a data science online course and get a data science certification.
Eligibility
For admission to Post-Graduate Program in Data Science, candidates should have:
- 2+ years of work experience preferred
- A bachelor’s degree with an average of 50% or higher marks
- Basic understanding of programming concepts and mathematics
Importance of Data Science
As you can see, data is now a massively important part of almost any business and if it wants to get ahead of its competition, then it is necessary to have an edge in terms of data. Hence, you would often come across the phrase ‘data is the new oil’.
Oil was the fuel that sparked the industrial achievements of the past century, and experts believe that data is going to be the element that is going to fuel the businesses of the new generation. There is now a massive demand for data scientists for many businesses. For instance, consider an e-commerce business.
The company probably gets a lot of order through its website or its app. However, in order to really make the business prosper, it is necessary for the company to know the purchases the users are making and the products that they might search for.
Once that data is properly available, a data scientist can crunch the numbers and provide an outline of the course of action that may help the business in garnering more revenues. This is just an example, and we can replicate it in different forms in many other businesses. Nowadays, access to actionable data is something that almost all businesses strive for.
Getting Into Data Science
Now students who are interested in studying data science should first keep in mind that it may be a new term altogether, but it is not exactly a new branch of study. Earlier, the job of data scientists was performed by trained statisticians. Now, a data scientist needs to have a solid grounding in statistics if he is to shine in his job.
Those who want to study data science need to have a degree in any science subject. Usually people with a degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics, statistics and physics get into this field.
Statisticians used to crunch data and provide companies with insights which they could then used to improve the performances of their businesses. However, it was the emergence of powerful computers that took it to a new level and resulted in data science.
The presence of power computers allowed statisticians to have access to powerful analytical tools and created a new branch of study called data science that amalgamated statistics with the power of computing tools.
A data scientist can work on a wide range of issues important for a company. He can provide insights that can help a company in acquiring new clients, create a much more effective marketing campaign, and also help in providing intelligence regarding innovation.
Last but not the least, we should also note it that a data scientist is not only concerned with crunching data; he needs to have the skill to present his insights in such a way that it is easily comprehensible to the company’s management.
Conclusion
Not everyone is well versed in data analysis, and hence, the presentation of the data is a highly important part of the data scientist’s job. The data scientist is one of the most important professionals for most industries in the world. They are going to play an important role is in the years to come.