Play And Make Money From The Ocean Of Data

The hiring market for data scientists and analytics professionals has gone into an overdrive and institutions are now offering new courses in Data Science...

- Abhay Anand

Big Data, Artificial intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science and Data Analytics are some of the words doing rounds in every field these days. Most industry reports point towards huge demand for professionals with an understanding of Data Science. A LinkedIn survey has put Machine learning (ML) Engineers and Data Scientists among the ‘Emerging Jobs’ list. Data Science has emerged as one of the most exciting careers with indications that the current number of machine learning engineers is around 10 times that of five years ago.

What is Data Science

Data Science requires accumulation of data, arranged and analysed to examine its effect on businesses. Google describes a Data Scientist as “a person employed to analyze and interpret complex digital data, such as the usage statistics of a website, especially in order to assist a business in its decisionmaking”. She/he chooses and builds appropriate algorithms and models to analyze the data in a better manner and uncover insights from it.

Increasingly, higher education institutions have also realised the importance of the career opportunities in this field and have either tweaked their existing programmes or have started a full-time course in Data Science or Data Analytics.

Leading the pack are the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), which have started B.Tech course in Data Analytics. IIT Madras has started an interdisciplinary dual degree program in data science, IIT Hyderabad has kicked off an M.Tech in Data Science, IIT Kanpur and IIT Mandi are also planning to launch courses in this area.

Data Science versus traditional B.Tech CS/IT