Data and analytics allow us to make informed decisions and to stop guessing. Decisions should not be made based on gut feelings. We should not make snap decisions because the gut can say one thing today and something quite different tomorrow. The data is what it is, even if it can also be easily abused.
Who likes to argue? Data analysis provides objective answers that can put an end to an argument.
Clients need to make trade-offs. Airlines can trade yield for load, or vice versa, travel companies need to spend their advertising budgets with maximum effect. Data and analytics can have a real influence on the decisions a client makes, and on the outcome.
Aside from the business impact, for me there are more personal reasons for loving data science.
It’s exciting. The tools for handling large amounts of data and performing analytics are quite possibly advancing more rapidly than any other technology field today. All industries continually invest in the best tools and with that comes a better understanding of how we should be doing analytics and how we should use the resulting information.
It satisfies curiosity. Why does your website sells the most products on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays at 8pm from laptops and mobile devices? We can look at the data and see that after EastEnders finishes most people are relaxed, looking through their phones and purchasing products.
And it’s mysterious. What is data science? In such a new field, finding consensus around one single definition is hard. But data science is the process of creating value from data. It’s not only about understanding the data, or how to make predictions based on the data, but appreciating the very fact that there’s so much of it that it requires specialised technology. That’s one of the things that sets data science apart from statistics.
Data science can be applied to many different domains. For instance, to car industry data – enquires, searches – and to data that is not necessarily car industry data, but that somehow affects the car industry, such as weather, average wages, and time of year. It is for reasons like this that data science offers a way forward and will have moved on by the time you read this.
Matt Hopkins is head of digital at S3 Advertising
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