What Is Data Science? Who is a data scientist?
Recently, I had an assignment of explaining my major to an 11-year old kid (based on FLAME Challenge). This is my take on explaining Data Science.
Imagine you are a detective and is assigned to solve a crime. What would be your approach? From the shows you have seen and the stories you have read, you will know first of all, you will look for evidences. Then you will work on it and see if there is meaning coming out of all this. After that, you will see to which person does it all point to. Finally, you will present all your theory to authorities and if turned out to be correct, you win the case.
Just like that, there is another field where you apply the same strategy to solve a specific issue say how to increase profit for a business or find cure for a disease. That field is Data science. You work on data (evidences), try to see if it tells you any story using different tools and techniques (finding meaning) and once you get the result tell the authorities what they should do to get the results they want.
With improvement in technology, we have seen a massive increase in the production of data. Computer science as a field wasn’t enough to handle this. We needed something more which can make a sense out of all this using the power of maths combined with computers. Thus, Data Science was born.
The understanding we get from studying the data is used to solve problems. People have been trying to do this for about a long time but within the past decade, it grew to a larger extent because of the improvement in technology and the way people have been using technology.
Now what does a data scientist do?
A data scientist basically uses various methods, creates assumptions, test them out and see if they match with the events that they observed. But a data scientist’s job doesn’t end here. One of the main tasks other than working on data is to “communicate” the results effectively to those who don’t have their level of knowledge. This is a crucial step because if the results are not conveyed properly, there is no use of all the work done till that point.
What all areas do we use data science exactly?
Well, literally everywhere!!! From making smart decisions to create profits in a company to fighting crime, in this day and age, data science is used everywhere. I for one work in sales. My job is to find the best solution to increase the sales of a particular product. I do that by working on customer data, mainly on factors like their interests, what they bought before, etc. and what roles do they play in increasing the sales.
Now you know who a data scientist is. A data scientist is just like a detective who “investigates” a problem and try to come to conclusions after working on evidences (data).
