Around the globe, the amount of data being created every year will grow exponentially if previous years are any indicator - according to IBM, 90% of the world’s data was created between 2017 and 2018 alone. Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world is a prominent contributor as it generates 4 new petabytes of data per day - that’s 4 million gigabytes. The emergence of ‘big data’, the rapid expansion of data, generated mostly from internet connected devices has allowed for the collection and analysis of this data, and according to the German multi-national SAP, “Big revenues are gained from big data”.
Netflix is a prime example of a big brand that utilizes big data analytics. The US streaming service collects data from their 150 million subscribers and implements data analytics models to discover customer behavior and buying patterns. The result of this collection of data is that 93% of original Netflix shows are renewed after their first season, compared to only a 35% chance of a show being renewed on a traditional broadcast network (selertysas).
The sector will continue to grow rapidly as society becomes more reliant on technology. More than 150 zettabytes of data will need analysis by 2025 and the worldwide ‘big data’ market is projected to grow from £35 billion in 2018 to £85 billion in 2027. This will lead to a massive increase in the number of jobs created - and these jobs will need to be filled. PwC reports that data science jobs in innovative industries like information technology can take twice as long to fill than the national benchmark average for B.A.+ jobs of 45 days.
Requirements for data science and analytics jobs are often multidisciplinary and they all require the communication skills to link analytics to creating value for the organization. Organizations such as The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the Research Data Alliance are working to set the industry best practice and provide the ongoing education needs for data scientists.
