Data Science Training

Data Science: What it is and why it matters

Data Science provides the technical and interpersonal skills for solving complex problems – and requires the curiosity to explore which problems an organisation needs to solve and in what sequence.

A data scientist is part mathematician, part computer scientist and part trend-spotter. And, because they straddle both the business and IT worlds, they are communicators. They also happen to be highly sought-after and well-paid. In fact, in 2020 AI Specialist (Artificial Intelligence, an aspect of Data Science) and Data Scientist were identified by LinkedIn as two of the Top 5 emerging jobs to aim for.

The demand for this expertise reflects how businesses now think about data. An organisation’s data is now valued as a strategic asset. Understanding, managing, analysing, and exploiting the rivers of information is the foundation of the new Digital Economy and data science skills are at the heart of coordinating the data assets in order to derive value.

There's not a definitive job description when it comes to a data scientist role. But here are a few things you'll likely be doing alongside colleagues in a data science team:

• Collecting large amounts of unruly data and transforming it into a more usable format.
• Solving business-related problems using data-driven techniques.
• Working with a variety of programming languages, such as SAS, R and Python.
• Having a solid grasp of statistics, including statistical tests and distributions.
• Staying on top of analytical techniques such as machine learning, deep learning and text analytics.
• Communicating and collaborating with both IT and business.
• Looking for order and patterns in data, as well as spotting trends that can help a business’s bottom line.