The future of data science as a career

The future of data science as a career

Ever noticed how suggestions pop up on your social media accounts and other digital platforms based on your internet search history? This is all made possible through data science.

The global business sectors are becoming more data-oriented every day and data science is the key to their success. Data keeps on growing in the digitised world and so does the need for experts to handle it. This creates a high demand for Data science jobs in the global job market, a role that is both challenging and rewarding.

Data science and its history

Data science is the study of data to gather information and analyse the patterns of people’s interactions with the world around them. The insights gained from the analysis are used to make business decisions and predict market trends. Data scientists use complex analytical and mathematical skills coupled with machine learning to create models that predict customer behaviour.

Data science has its history rooted in data analysis, introduced by academician John Tukey in 1985. Later, the branches of data began expanding and in 2002, data science became a discipline of its own with the publication of the Data Science Journal by the Committee on Data for Science and Technology.

It was around 2008 that data science moved to the professional field from the academic circle. Ever since then, the data science field has been expanding exponentially with reports from Deloitte suggesting an annual growth rate of around 2.4% for data science jobs.

Data science and machine learning

Before, professionals had to use their statistical, analytical and mathematical skills to derive information from large chunks of data. However, the volume of collected data increased and the type of data being collected also changed, meaning large amounts of unstructured data had to be analysed by data scientists.

This technical difficulty led the scientists in many big companies to develop their own programming tools to make data extraction easier. The top five companies, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple, are essentially more data-driven than the rest and came up with advanced tools to facilitate data science work. For example, Google created TensorFlow for deep learning of unstructured data.

With the advancement of technology, data science became multidisciplinary and blended with machine learning and artificial intelligence. Today, you can feed data to AI programs to obtain valuable insights about consumer behaviour.

Companies also prefer AI for its use across multiple platforms and to automate data management tasks. Data science and AI have become the one-stop-shop for organisations to meet their business demands. With the surge in AI solutions and programming languages, the demand for data scientists will continue to increase each year.

The future of data science

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), global data will grow to 163 zettabytes by 2025. The report also suggests that many global giants will collect data from third parties to provide targeted product service to its customers.

Gone are the days when devices were limited to personal computers, as gadgets owned by a single person have increased three-fold, producing more data to be extracted. The exponential rise of data will unlock new business opportunities across the globe, therefore increasing the demand for professionals to handle this data.

It has been more than a decade since the Harvard Business Review announced data science as ‘the most sought-after jobs of 21st century’. Since then, the data science field has widened to include plenty of opportunities for skilled professionals.

According to LinkedIn, data science is among the top 15 emerging careers in the world. With AI and machine learning taking its place in the field and the global business sector depending largely on the insights derived from data to plan business strategies, the career opportunities for data science will always be rich. Just like data analytics expanded to form data science, the latter is also spreading its wings to cover various disciplines that may benefit the processing of data.

With increasing demands around the world, working as a data scientist can be a lucrative and satisfying career choice. All you need is the right skill-set which can be developed on the Master’s in Data Science programme offered at the University of Europe for Applied Sciences in Berlin.

This programme will equip you with the relevant skills required to succeed in the data science field. The course has been created in line with the demands of the global data science job market which will help you land good job roles.

Additionally, this master’s programme offers interdisciplinary electives where students have the chance to tailor their studies to their career goals. Industry expert instructors will guide you through the practical applications of data analytics and provide you with guidance to establish a successful career.

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