What is Data Science?
Data science is the field of study that deals with an enormous volume of data or information to find undiscovered patterns. It is also the use of advanced tools and techniques in analyzing data to originate meaningful information, and make far-reaching decisions.
As with a lot of other things in this age, understanding the opportunities that a concept like Data science presents is important for everyone on the food chain. It is also imperative to know what the future looks like for that aspect of technology especially because the way we gather, process and interpret data evolves daily.
Data science has been revolutionary in every industry across the globe. With top-notch digitization of processes, the generation of data is at its apex. Thus, data science techniques and tools are used to increase productivity across every industry. Data science has tremendous applications, which makes it not just limited to one.
THE INDUSTRY-BY-INDUSTRY DATA SCIENCE “TAKEOVER“
In the healthcare sector, scholars say the application or wonder of data science is in healthcare. With the large datasets of patients, we can build a data science approach to identify the diseases and treat them. Healthcare is among the sectors for providing opportunities for professionals who can use their medical expertise with data science and provide immediate help to suffering patients.
In fintech or the banking and finance sector, when we think of a safe place to keep money, banks come to mind. However, with an increase in online transactions and activities, fraud cases and very stringent regulation, Data science helps to predict when a fraud will happen or monitor trends that lead to frauds thus makings banks proactive. Data science also aids research for financial players to create effective money management solutions for low to middle income earners. It goes ahead to aid investment in the right places based on its predictions for best results.
In the automobile industry, it has experienced an utmost shift for the past few years and is still developing. More self–driving cars are being created, such as Telsa, Lucid air, etc. These cars make use of neural networks such as computer visions, image recognition, and deep learning. The automobile industry is a new powerhouse to jobs and opportunities in data science.
In power and energy, there is a skyrocketing demand for energy. Data science and big data have transformational powers to reshape the use of energy vertically such as wind energy. Data science can help in building AI bots that can easily handle enormous power sources.
In army and weapons, data science can help build automated weapons that will be smart enough to identify when to fire and when not to fire. Every military application uses AI and increased research and development funding from military research agencies to develop new and advanced AI applications. It projects to drive the increased adoption of AI-driven systems in the military sector.
Also, the internet industry has become an untamed giant. It is a result of data surge caused by technology, big data, and cloud technology. The data can design personalized recommendations, undertake sentiment analysis, video analysis, etc.
JOB OPPORTUNITIES IN DATA SCIENCE
Some of the prominent data scientist job titles are:
Data architect
Data analyst
Machine learning engineer
Software developer/engineer
Sports analyst
Finance quant
Data engineer, and more.
The ability to code and think critically with the knowledge of statistics makes up a successful data scientist.
REQUIRED SKILLS that will land one exciting career opportunities in data science:
Programming languages: R, Python, JavaScript
Statistics and applied mathematics;
Databases: SQL, Oracle
Machine learning and neural networks
Deep learning frameworks: TensorFlow, Keras, Pytorch
Creative thinking and business knowledge.
“As a data scientist, I can predict what is likely to happen, but I cannot explain why it is going to happen.” Bill Schmarzo, Chief Technology Officer at Dell EMC
Companies have shifted their focus from retrospective to conducting data science with advanced mathematical models and ML. The cloud changed everything. With the ability to inexpensively collect and store more data, the need to build data models powered by ML came in.
The world is experiencing an increased demand for data science services in various fields, with market researchers estimating its potential growth shortly.
With the quest, the path opens for new talents and job seekers to try their skills and hard work in this genre. The surfeit of data technologies is creating several job opportunities for budding data professionals to grab shortly.
With science and technology, new frontiers emerge daily and such is the case with Data science and all it portends for us.
The surge in data science career opportunities hasn’t just begun because we use it in our daily lives whether we know it or not but the more mainstream it gets, the higher the surge gets. Companies will little by little begin to try to make sense of data generated and skilled data scientists will continue to be wooed by small or big businesses.
