Introduction to Data

science
What it is ?

 “Goal is in extracting meaning from data and creating data products and
seeks to use all available and relevant data to effectively tell a story that
can be easily understood by non-practitioners.”
 - From Wikipedia (not on latest version of the page)
What it is ?(Contd..)
General Tasks of a Data Scientist
 Get a little domain understanding
 Define the problem statement well
 Pre-process data to fix data issues like duplicates, missing values, etc.
 Visualize data to the extent possible for better understanding and to see basic
patterns
 Identify what kind of a problem it is (Prediction/Forecasting, Classification,
Optimization and/or Managing Big Data)
 Identify appropriate modeling techniques and build models
 Analyze results and iterate, as needed; DO NOT trust software outputs blindly
‟ Remember:
 Garbage In, Garbage Out
 Visualize outputs and Communicate
General Tasks(Contd..)
Classification; Supervised and
Unsupervised
Prediction/Forecasting is finding the
line/plane closest to all points
Forecasting
Optimization
Analysis
Churn can be heartbreaking
Retail Analytics

How your shopping habits

reveal even the most powerful
and private information
Recommendation Engine
Text Mining

 Natural Language Processing

 Sentiment Analysis
 Information Retrieval Systems
Other Important Applications

 Pharmaceutical -Fraud detection in clinical trials; Drug development process

 Healthcare - Non-compliance in taking prescription drugs
 Banking and Insurance - Fraud detection; Credit scoring; Cross-selling and
upselling products;
Detecting money laundering; Forecasting stock prices
 Travel and Hospitality - Improve customer experience
 Politics - Predict winners; Identify fence-sitters
Other Important Applications

 Retail and Telecommunications - Customer retention; Enhancing supply chain

efficiency;
 Improving customer service quality; Planning store locations; Cross-selling and
upselling;
 Recommendation systems; Sales forecasting
 Government - Policy planning; Effective use of resources; Security against
terrorist attacks;
 Effective policing by understanding crime patterns; Weather predictions;
Calamity predictions
How to build career in Data Science

 Statistics
 Machine Learning
 Communications
 Understanding customer domain - Be inquisitive
 Asking the right questions of the data
Finally

 Data is everywhere; you can’t escape it.

 You Can Make Better Decisions Using Data Science / Big Data Analytics
Thank you