Importance of Data Science in today’s world

 

By: Francesco Cartella

 

A majority of organizations carry out business based on insights gained from data analysis. Nowadays, the digital universe has experienced a huge shift in the size, type and form of data and in the way data is analyzed. Among  stunning  facts  showing  the  data  explosion  tendency,  it  is  worth mentioning that (i) unstructured data is doubling every three months, (ii) the year  2011 saw  47  percent  overall  growth  and (iii)  by  2015 the number of networked  devices will  be twice the  global  population. Moreover,  another example  of  proliferating  and valuable  data source  is represented  by social media.  For  instance, the  300 millions  of tweets  processed  daily by  Twitter and  the  huge  amount  of  data  generated  every  day  by  the  585  million Facebook active users, represent a gold mine for businesses that make value out of advertisement and users habits.The  Data  Scientist professional  figure  comes  into  play  when  the  need  of extracting valuable insights from a huge amount of data emerges. From the figures  mentioned  above,  and  from  the  fact  that  data  is  nowadays considered as the “new oil”, it is not surprising that Data Scientist has been  defined  as  the  “sexiest  job  of  21st century”, according  to  a  2012  Harvard  Business Review article. In  the  workshop,  we  will  describe  the  most  important skills  required  by  companies  that  are  looking  for  Data  Scientist  profiles.  Furtherly,  we  will  examine  why  a professional  figure  having  a  PhD  background  can  be considered as a good candidate to cover a Data Scientist position. Finally, an overview of the most  common applications  in which Data  Science  gives  its highest contribution will be given.