Data Science Facts
Data science facts show more and more companies are hiring data science practitioners. That’s because data science is a proven disciple for business growth. Data science extracts meaningful insights from data. Data scientists require domain expertise, programming skills, and a knowledge of mathematics and statistics.
75% of companies using data science say it directly contributes to a 10% increase in sales. While some say it leads to job elimination replacing human functions with robots, 83% of firms with data science employees say it has lead to the creation of new jobs within their companies.
Today, it is a thriving area for business, corporate, competitive and job growth. But one that also raises ethical considerations as to what is being collected and how it is used.
To demystify it, here are 30 data science facts for dummies to explain this discipline.
Data Sources
Data scientists divide data into three major groups: Structured (organized), semi-structured (organized but not standardized) and unstructured (not organized). Regardless of the grouping, the data used has to be made understandable to computers. So human understanding can work with computer processing. Here is where the data comes from.
- 91% of the data for data science is text.
- 80% of photos are taken on smartphones and most will become searchable data online.
- 78% is generated by internal systems.
- 41% is from public data sets.
- 33% are images.
- 15% is a video.
Data Science Analysis and Benefits
Data gathering and analysis from various channels help companies learn the paths that bring the best outcomes and value and rule out the need to take high stakes risk. Here are the numbers that support the process.
- Less than 0.5% of all data we create is ever analyzed and used.
- A 10% increase in data accessibility will result in more than $65 million.
- 26% of businesses say data and analytics have significantly changed the nature of industry-wide competition.
- 36% of investment professionals use web scraping to derive data.
- 40% of businesses say they need to manage unstructured data on a frequent basis.
- 50% of businesses say data and analytics significantly impacted new entrants launching data and analytics businesses that undermine traditional competitors’ value propositions.
- 62% of retail businesses see competitive advantages from information and analytics.
- 65% say it can reduce churn.
- 73% say it can improve customer satisfaction scores.
- 70% of data is created by individuals, but enterprises are responsible for storing and managing 80% of that.
- 73% of organizations have already invested in data science with additional net income expected to come mostly from Fortune 1000 companies.
- Bad data costs US businesses alone $600 billion annually.
- 50 billion smart connected devices in the world, collecting, analyzing and sharing data by 2020.
- 1 billion pieces of content are shared via Facebook’s Open Graph every day.
- 1 trillion photos were taken and billions of them will be shared online.
Data Science Jobs
Data scientists produce machine-learning algorithms to numbers, text, images, video, and audio to produce artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning systems that perform tasks ordinarily requiring human intelligence. Programming and coding experience is a plus. But a data scientist that also demonstrate critical thinking abilities and strong presentation skills is a major find. The facts show data scientists are in demand.
- 90% of data scientists are contacted at least once a month for new job opportunities with over 50% contacted on a weekly basis and 30% being contacted several times a week. 88% of data scientists are happy to very happy in their jobs.
- 80% of a data scientist’s valuable time is spent simply finding, cleaning, and organizing data, leaving only 20% to actually perform analysis.
- 64% of data scientists agree that they are working in this century’s sexiest job.
- 60% of businesses believe it is harder to source talent for data and analytics positions than for any other role.
- In 2015, 25% of data scientists had been in their roles for less than two years. Two years later, that number has increased to 35%,
- 190,000 data scientists are required in the U.S. by next year.
- $152,173 per year is the average salary of a data science engineer
- $129,194 per year is the average salary of a data science architect
- $60, 000 per year is the average salary of a data science analyst
Do these facts explain data science and its benefits to you? Do you need help applying data science to your company?