Data science market is growing at 40% annually
Data is king and all organizations, be it big or small, are formulating solutions to build analysis models, understand realities, and to predict future outcomes. Data and data analytics is going to define how we lead our lives as companies, hospitals, schools, universities and even the local startups harness huge data to make informed decisions.
What is Data Science?
In simple terms, data science can be defined as the gathering of data from various sources to obtain actionable insights. That is, the collected data can be used to conduct statistical analysis, data analysis, machine learning algorithms, data modelling, pre-processing of data, etc. The best example of this process can be found in the personalised ads that we receive while using any social media. The ads that we see are based on our internet data including Google searches, browsing, online transaction history, etc.
The working of Data Science
According to a report made by the Berkley School of Information, Data Science works in a cycle containing five stages.
Capture: Data acquisition, data entry, signal reception, data extraction
Maintain: Data warehousing, data cleansing, data staging, data processing, data architecture
Process: Data mining, clustering/classification, data modelling, data summarization
Communicate: Data reporting, data visualization, business intelligence, decision making
Analyze: Exploratory/confirmatory, predictive analysis, regression, text mining, qualitative analysis
These five processes are continuously done by a data scientist to obtain the result that they are looking for. This needs different techniques, skillsets and programs.
Uses of Data Science
Data Science can be used to do a variety of things like anomaly detection, classification, pattern detection, facial/voice/text recognition, etc. it can be used in specific industries for innovations in the products and services.
Healthcare: The data can be used to understand diseases, practice preventive medicine, diagnose diseases faster and explore new treatment options.
Self-Driving Cars: The data and the information collected from security cameras and sensors are used to control the self driving cars to maintain the lanes, keeping speed limits, etc.
Entertainment: The data of a person’s usage pattern of audio and video content is collected to provide personalised suggestions. Applications like Netflix and Spotify make use of this technique.
Cyber security: The collected data regarding various online crimes as well as phishing and malware including viruses can be used to enhance the cyber security of the users.
Career prospects of Data Science
Since the field of Data Science is comparatively new, the competition in this field is very low. Some jobs that a person with a Data Science degree can look upon are:
- Data Scientist
- Data Analyst
- Data Architect
- Machine Learning Engineer
- Business Intelligence Developer
Data Scientist Salary
According to Glassdoor, an entry-level data scientist’s salary with experience of 1 to 4 years is Rs 5,80,000 and salaries will rise with growing experience and skills. Data Science and data analytics jobs are growing at 40%-45% annually. A data science professional with three to ten years of experience will get an annual salary of Rs 25 lakhs to 60 lakhs.
Demand of Data Science professionals in India
There were 1,37,870 Data Science jobs in India in June 2020 and by June 2021 the open job requirements for Data science went up by 47.5 per cent according to AIM Research. India contributes to 9.4 per cent of global Data Science jobs from the 7.2 per cent in January 2020. And as per Michael Page India’s ‘The Humans of Data Science’ report, data science will create around 11.5 million jobs by 2026. Data Science was ranked as the fastest growing job globally by LinkedIn’s emerging jobs report.
Data Science Courses in India
Numerous universities and colleges in India offer various undergraduate, postgraduate, and diploma courses. The best among them are listed below:
- IIT Guwahati
- IIT Hyderabad
- IIT Bombay
- IIT Kanpur
- NIT Thiruchiraplli
- SP Jain School of Global Management
- Symbiosis Centre for Information Technology
- KJ Somaiya Institute of Management
Data Sciences should not be seen just as a medium for business growth but can make the world a better place. Humungous amounts of data help in better weather forecast and sustainable development.
