Data: A Love Story
Love is always an interesting subject, and most times, not often told in film and tv, is that the love is pretty much one sided.
I must confess that big data analysis wasn’t exactly on my radar when I started my career. In fact, like cats I have many, many lives, all which led me to data (kind of like a data filled brick road). In fact, I started out as a socilogy major in college, and my first job after college was in sales. It was great in terms of connecting with people in fact it was selling cars at Enterprise Car Sales, this job was so much fun.
My next career was in higher education. I was working at a school where I was able to work with IT to help develop SQL scripts to pull down information from the database and used it to increase our admission and financial aid efforts.
I got laid off, and that hurt. So I did what anyone would do, couldn't find a job so I created one, along with my brother. We purchased a Cost Consulting franchise and we didn't do well in the begging, although I was really great with people, it was a tough sell, during Covid-19.
After watching, a Netflix show, I realized I can pull the data from salesforce using a SQL script and a predictive algorithm to create where and when would be the best time to sell and to whom.
It worked, however it made me more curious in to the world of data. I wanted to work with data on a massive level, so here are my top three reasons why I fell in love with you data.
Why I love data?
1. Make informed decisions
I’ve worked in higher education and in sales, and both are heavily dependent on decisions. I worked in organizations where people made important decisions without any facts, just sheer opinion. Data never lies though. Data analysis allows you to take informed decisions. I want to help organizations both private, public, and government to make better data oriented decisions.
2. Learn new (programming) languages
I’ve always been fascinated by programming languages. I thought myself SQL, designed databases for my former workplaces and it was amazing. It’s learning something new and applying it. Right now, I’m in the process of learning R and it’s just so much fun! Programming helps me think up of solutions that solve some really complex business problems. To add to this, I also like to build things people use.
3. The power of Predictive analytics
Predictive analytics is the use of statistics, machine learning, data mining, and modeling to analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future events. In layman’s terms, it gives us mere mortals the ability to predict the future, like Nostradamus or Carnac the Magnificent (but without the funny hats). The power to predict who will click, buy, lie or die is fascinating. I hope to use that either in education, finance, and entertainment industries.
Data scientist is termed as the sexiest job of 21st century-by HBR. There is a lot of hype around the terms big data and data science these days, hopefull it lasts, but if it don’t, it doesnt matter, I am here till death do us part.
When I tell my friends that I work in the field of data analytics, they are curious to know more, such as: What tools I use, my area of work, remuneration etc. It feels great when people ask questions like “how can I get into big data analytics?”
Now you know what makes me tick and drives me to love data analytics. Yes, I am a complete data junkie and I will never change. All of you out there who publish content like this blog just end up fueling my desire to learn more, be more creative and innovative as well as be the best data analyst I can be. To that, I say thank you.
