Applications of data science today involve processes that thrive on data generated from various sources by collating, cleaning, processing and drawing useful and hidden insights from the data.
The rise of modern technologies like interactive websites, social networking sites, search engines, chatbots, e-commerce sites, video streaming have contributed tremendously in the generation of data. Whatever someone does online like chatting, signing up on a website, daily posts and interactions on social networking sites, buying items online, watching or streaming live videos generates a large chunk of users data daily. These data carries useful insights that point to personalities of individuals using these technologies. All these data can be analyzed scientifically to improve on the user experience like suggesting friends or close associates on social networking sites, suggesting related items when buying on an e-commerce site, suggesting movies or videos to watch and auto-complete when typing a text to name a few.
Applications of data science today are as follows:
- Netflix: it uses the data from millions of users regarding the movies and shows they have watched on the site, the actors they like and the kind of movies they like and using advanced algorithm (part of data science) on this data, they can come up with a list of movies or shows an individual will also be interested in watching and they start suggesting these movies to them.
- YouTube: When you watch a video or a set of videos consistently on Youtube, it automatically starts suggesting to you more videos based on what you watched. This is made possible by data science algorithms that collates, study, analyze and interprete users preferences base on their browse or watch history.
- Amazon. Product recommendation on Amazon comes from sophisticated data science algorithms. Actually, Amazon has implemented algorithms that can predict with some certainty if you are going to buy a certain product. If the probability is high enough, they will deliver it to the closest drop-off point near you, so when you actually purchase it, it could be delivered the same day. This is amazing!
- Facebook: Facebook recently built very strong algorithms on its popular social media platform. This algorithms which strive on users data can now make a more accurate suggestion of friends, relatives and even people within the same organization or geographical location. It captures your preferences when you come online, which they can further use to tailor more posts you would be interested in. It also helps them to provide a more targeted advert to their advertisers to reach specific people that might be interested in services or products been advertised.
A data-driven decision is a new wave in modern applications and businesses. Therefore, an individual or company must either adapt and employ data science tools and techniques or be simply be forced out of business.