CrowdFlower have produced a thought-provoking infographic that considers what’s going to be hot in data science during 2015.
It’s interesting that four of the eight topics point to the importance of domain expertise in data analysis:
- Integrated data scientists—people who are in the thick of the problems, as opposed to external analysis who just see numbers
- Rich data—focus on what is relevant, as opposed to throwing everything into the bucket
- Everyone loves data—user-friendly tooling allows people to analyse their own data
- Data scientist with a BA—recognising that you need more than technical skills to make sense of data
I regularly see data scientists struggle to derive value from data as they fail to grasp the needs of the business. There’s a belief that context-free analysis of the numbers will magically reveal incredible insights. Tragically, such a belief often leads to disappointment and the rejection of an important capability.
Business leaders need to be intimately involved with their data, guiding analysis and making sure it bring insights to real-world problems.
Let’s hope that happens in 2015.
Read more in the CrowdFlower blog post.
