Why Data Science
Prediction.
That one word carries the weight behind the reason we are even conscious, what eons of trial and error have led up to. The ability to predict further and further into the future with the most advanced piece of natural hardware in existence is what has brought us to where we are today. This power of prediction has long been limited within our minds, but since the advent of modern technology, computers have become more and more an extension of ourselves. This is at the very precipice of the advancement of human technology, where once we replaced physical human labor for mechanical, we will now replace mental labor with digital.
This is no easy task, many magnitudes greater in difficulty than replacing manual labor. Industry has created machines in our own image to labor in our place, what used to be a science fiction dream is now reality. Humanoid robots will soon enough be able to replace workers in factories and warehouses and the like, all while improving cost and productivity. In this same way we are forming digital minds after our own, utilizing the fullest of our knowledge on the structure of the brain to use as a template for the hardware and software. Hundreds of thousands of processes are run by our mind unconsciously, outside of our perception we do the most complicated and monotonous tasks imaginable.
These tasks appear bland standing before the high level work done by the conscious mind, but remember that the conscious mind would lose all functionality without an uncountable number of supportive underlying processes. Imagine trying to understand what a friend is saying in a loud, crowded room. Somehow you are able to pick the friend’s voice out above all others, only comprehending his speech while everyone else is tuned out. You may also consider how our mind continually receives an unbelievably massive image, but is also able to notice only those things of value, such as movement.
Data science also starts here, as it must, cleaning, formatting, and organizing input data for the higher levels to process. Without this skill nothing further is accomplishable. A strong base is necessary to continue any further, lots of good, clean data will only aid in receiving quality results moving into machine and deep learning. Real artificial intelligence does not truly exist at the moment, to my knowledge. This should not discourage anyone from the field, in fact I take it as encouragement. Joining a field that has not yet been finalized, with every part and piece already discovered, personally gives me two things. First it opens up the possibility of adding something of your own to the field, to discover an improvement to the already in place processes, or to even discover a completely new path to the same results, or better. The second is that if you don’t discover anything new, others will for quite a long time. This means that there will always be something new to learn in the field, always opportunity to improve whilst making use of what you have already learned.
I view data science as an extension of the capabilities of the mind, we have been able to predict weather for thousands of years, using data as seemingly irrelevant as joint ache to foretell the weather. Unknown at the time, joint ache is directly linked with barometric pressure, which is in turn directly connected to weather patterns. This is the power of data that the human mind is tuned to, to detect patterns and their causes, then to apply these findings to the real world. The mind is only so capable before it reaches its limits, which is where tools to augment our abilities come into play.
The preceding reasoning is why I have taken to data science, I see it as the bleeding edge of technology, infinitely useful just as machines have been since their inception. I believe the job security for this field to be much higher than almost any other, as the main cause for concern in job security is automation, which has data science at its heart. It is applicable to any field, medicine, manufacturing, education, the list goes on. Whatever background or skills you already have, that knowledge combined with data science can exponentially increase the quality of your work.
I have personally studied mainly economics, computer sciences, and medicine in my past, and plan on applying what I have learned and will learn in data science to improve my learning in these subjects, among others. I could generate predictions on single companies or the market as a whole based on my knowledge plus data I gather, I could also predict what medications one needs based on history, lifestyle, and genetics, although that sounds like a project for the far future. I encourage you to imagine how data science could benefit you with the subjects that you are passionate about, instead of using the data inferred by others, you could generate original data yourself based on trustworthy data of your own finding. Working through problems in this way would undoubtedly offer a wider and deeper understanding of the issue at hand, leaving no question unanswerable due to controlling first hand data as opposed to statistics generated by unknown individuals working with data from mysterious sources.
It is my hope that through the sharing of my journey through data science you and others also beginning their journey will be able to learn from my mistakes as well as successes, as I have from those preceding me. You could say that data science is currently under construction, every day people further the capabilities of the field, from researchers discovering new actions or structures within the brain to emulate to mathematicians creating new and more efficient methods to employ these techniques, down to the Python developers and community designing simpler, faster and more accurate methods for you to manipulate data.
