Tag: AI

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Here’s a scenario, you walk into your local grocery store to get some items for the house, stroll down the aisle to the baby (or “oops I did it again”) care section to pick up a few packages of diapers. While enjoying the “dear god, why didn’t I make like a git request and just pull” section, you pause and rewind to do a double take because you see something located where it shouldn’t be.

You hurry back to confirm what you thought you saw, and you think to yourself “no, that’s not right. There’s no way this would be placed here.”

Looking around to see if anyone else can view the wonder on your face to share your experience.

You ponder the almighty question… “why would there be a drinking hip flask in the same aisle right across from the baby products?”

Your mind scrambles to figure out what was the elevator pitch and who greenlight this nonsense.

Now, would you believe me if I told you that said item was placed there with you in mind? Well, not for you per se but for you to purchase leading to a raise in sales.

If you have wondered about this, you’re not alone and I can tell you that it’s attributed to a collection of “data” with a dash of “science” is the reason why this and many other layouts occur.

Sidenote, starting now take a shot every time you read the word “data”. You just might be hammered by the end of this post, enjoy.

Data Science is to blame which I will explain how, so like usual, I’ll be going over what, who, and what uses it, and if this is a field you could venture into without breaking the bank because…well, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like saving money.

Science Behind the Data

Data science is the study of data to pull meaningful insights for a business. Data is typically pulled from either a method called “scraping” (or web-scraping, meaning to extract information from websites) or acquired from sites that provide a database collection on domain knowledge of interest.

What is data science? Well, I can tell you it’s nothing like Breaking Bad, although… there may be some applications that could be applied. I’m going to stop right there; kids never use data science to boost sales for narcotics.

Various fields such as mathematics, computer engineering, artificial intelligence, and statistics come together to answer questions in the event of what happened and try to make possible predictions of what will happen.

So, imagine data science as if your ex and a bunch of their friends got together to talk about everything you’ve ever done and run through the possibilities of you finding true love or dying alone. Man, that’s cold.

Even though it’s primarily used to evaluate and provide possible models to help drive business decisions, it can be applied to many domains. Now, it’s time to explain the evil masterminds behind trying to see you as the “best parent of the year” by Child Protective Services standards.

You just may start breaking bad after you read this.

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Overlords and You

Touching back on that lovely stroll down to the baby section only to find the drinking hip flask (or what some may call a coping mechanism for the sleepless nights). The people who use data science are well… called Data Scientists (a very creative name, I know but trust me they are the culprits).

Data Scientists (not to be confused with Data Analysis) undergo several processes to provide insights. Data scientists wrangle data, put information through data preprocessing, clean, transform, and reduce what’s called “noise” (having too much data).

After this, the fun part begins where questions are framed, and data experimentation is performed many times over to produce insightful models.

So think of it like this, evil store overlords want to know how they can boost sales of alcoholic items, scientist acquires the data either provided by the overlord imparting spreadsheets or collection through other means mentioned earlier, and scientists spend day and night combing over details such as product placement, amount of time spent picking items in a given location, and how likely people are to make purchases for certain items.

Finally, they present their findings to evil overlords using visualization models to determine where customers are more likely to pick up items.

Yes, customers… you all were the victim in this situation.

You always have been.

Science of Data and Us

Right, so you’re probably getting a good idea of how data science plays in our world, but you might not be aware of how far this rabbit hole goes. (That’s what she said.)

I illustrated a picture of betraying business owners as evil people who are out to collect money using your vice, this happens but it is not always the case.

Since data science can be applied to many domains such as healthcare, where it was used to track covid-19 cases by visualizing the spread of the infection to better drive health policy decisions.

Environmental care, where data science has helped nations drive solutions to better manage resources, and brace for climate change.

Companies use data science to better know their customers so they can prescribe products to best suit the customers’ needs.

The areas where data science is being applied are endless.

So, could you imagine what we would have if we never examined and experimented with data? Still don’t have flying cars though (I’m a bit salty about that.)

Schooling Required

If you have made it this far and you’re probably interested in trying to pursue becoming a data scientist as a career. Wondering, “how does someone like me get into this field without a degree?”

I’m not going to lie to you, it’s going to be tough.

Don’t like school and have no plan to attend? Be prepared to take a metric ton of courses.

You’re going to need decent programming skills (two languages to start with are Python or R), knowledge and understanding of mathematics, statistics, and calculus, and finally being able to attain domain knowledge because there will be many areas to work in.

There is a trade-off with learning so much, aside from the pay (depending on your location in the world) which could range from $63k – $160k (according to Glassdoor, feel free to check your location) your work is never boring unless the company you’re researching for is boring.

Being able to display your findings and back your information will be a must.

Picture how it would look if you did a presentation for a company on increasing their sales for a product, they go with your models only for them to be in the red into their next quarter.

They more or less would treat you like Ms. Cleo and not call you back for another reading.    

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Think you have what it takes to be a Data scientist?

Drop a comment about a domain area that would be of interest to you.