Data has always been there. Information in all forms, shapes, and sizes has existed since time immemorial. At the crux of it, Data science is about using data in innovative ways to generate business value. The world of big data, cloud, and analytics are pivoted around this very same concept. The reason why data science is the fastest growing discipline in tech can be attributed to its importance critical business decision making. The more the data, the better the analysis, the more powerful decision making it would guarantee. Data science enables data-driven accurate answers, real time decision-making ability, and predicting what’s next is on the anvil.

Let us look at some of the clear-cut advantages data science provides:
Data science enables well-pronged decision making - A segment of data science - predictive analytics, which is based on real time and relevant data, will undoubtedly provide better and more to-the-point answers than, let's say what human experts can arrive at. Industries generate huge amounts of data every single day from users who are on mobile apps and websites. There are companies which track the movement of users - like where and/or when they travel, what they buy, what they share, and where their interests lie. These companies then use this data to predict trends, find answers that will lead to better decision making, etc. In fact, such is the quantity of data that certain industry experts opine that, all that data compiled on paper can wrap our Earth four times over. A brand can gain immensely and in myriad ways, if they understand customers genuinely; and this is where data science comes into the picture. Further more, data science has changed the process of decision making completely. Transitioning into a complete data driven company made significantly enhanced their objective, financial, and operations

measurements. Previously, when there was no access to data, decision making was best left to someone who had relevant expertise and experience. These people, in turn, relied on patterns, common sense, and instincts, which they had developed over the years. Such decision is fraught with lots of loopholes that may be dangerous. The tech industry puts this quite rightly - you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Data science enables management and therefore, measurements.

Data driven decisions are always more accurate than decisions made on the basis of past movements

Data science enables trend finding- Data scientist aggregate data to spot trends. Within an organization, they do this in accordance with the organizational goals. Also, these data crunchers let you know what is on the anvil before experts come to know of such trends. Moreover, data driven decisions are always more accurate than decisions made on the basis of past movements. For example, think of Google Trends. It uses an algorithm that crunches data collected through its search engine, and generates accurate results. There is an avalanche of structured and unstructured data getting generated every single day, around the world. As per a report released by IBM, 90 percent of the data existing in the world today has been generated in the last two years alone, at a rate of 2.5 quintillion bytes of data per day. Amidst this data deluge, data science and data scientists reside. Data is coming in from a variety of sources, such as sensors, internet, social media, apps, wearable technology, e-commerce, and m-commerce, etc. The form varies from videos to texts to audios. Cloud computing also contributed to this data deluge, but it also made data collection both widespread by making it more scalable.

As mentioned above, big data and analytics can indeed assist businesses in understanding their customers in a much better way than human counterparts, and can surely fetch game-changing inferences if used correctly. Netflix and Amazon are reputed for their powerful recommendation engines that not only use what people buy but also what they browse. Similarly, credit card companies analyze associative power found in big data. Therefore, big businesses require big data to function efficiently. Even the tech industry is required to harness the power of data science into something worthwhile. The need is to create apps, systems, and algorithms that power these data-driven customer targeting engines. Apart from that, the demand for data scientists possessing rare data skills is in high demand today. Ed-tech platforms like Udacity are also offering specifically designed degree courses to candidates willing to build a career in the data domain. With Udacity, candidates can learn the nuances of data science from industry experts at Facebook, Cloudera, MongoDB, Georgia Tech, and more. The platform offers introductory, advanced as well as industry-specific courses to meet specific learning goals.