Last updated on October 12th, 2022 at 09:50 am
Do Data Scientists Use Statistics?
Data science has been the buzzword of the tech industry for the past few years. Everyone is aware of the endless opportunities and large pay scale awaiting the data scientists. But when the question becomes "what do they do?" or "how do they do it? " Only a few people know it. This article discusses whether data scientists use statistics in their operations. Read on to find out.
Statistics in Data Science
Statistics can be a very powerful tool in data science. It is simply the use of mathematics to analyse the data technically. The following are the few important instances where data scientists use statistics.
- Design Experiments to Inform Product Decisions.
Data scientists use Frequentist Statistics and experimental design to determine whether or not the difference in the performance of two types of products are significant to take action. This application help data scientists to understand the experimental results especially when there are multiple metrics being measured. - Models to Predict the Signal
Using Regression, Classification, Time series analysis and casual analysis, data scientists can tell the reason behind a change of rate of sales. They use these techniques to predict the sales of upcoming months and point out the relevant trends to be careful of. - Turning Big Data Into Big Picture
Consider a large group of customers buying products. The data about each person's shopping list is worthless if it stays like that. Data scientists can label each customer and put similar ones into a group and understand the buying pattern. It helps to identify how each group of people affect the business development. Statistic techniques such as clustering, latent variable analysis and dimensionality reduction are used to achieve this. - Understand User Engagement, Retention, Conversion and Leads
It is known that many customers would be lost from the signing-in stage to the actual regular use stage. Data science use techniques such as regression, latent variable analysis, casual effect analysis and survey design to find out the reason behind this loss. It also identifies the successful leads the company is using to engage more customers. - Predicting the Customer Needs
Statistical techniques such as latent variable analysis, predictive modelling, clustering and dimensionality reduction help data scientists to predict the items a customer might need next. A matrix of users and their interactions with the company product is all that is needed to obtain this. - Telling the story with Data
It is the end product of all operations of data scientists. He acts as the ambassador between the company and data. All the findings from data should be properly communicated with the rest of the company without losing any fidelity. Rather than summarizing the numbers, a data scientist has to explain why each number are significant. To do that properly, data visualisation techniques from statistics are used. Clearly, data scientists use statistics to solve various problems in their day to day life. If data science seems the right career choice for you, don't wait for long. Imarticus Learning is now providing course on data science prodegree. This Genpact data science course will equip you with all the necessary skills for a successful data science career.