Data Science has seen a massive boom in the past few years. It has also been claimed that it is indefinitely one of the fastest-growing fields in the IT/academic sector. One of the most hyped Trends in Data Science this year was that the sector saw a major hike in jobs as compared to the past years!
Such an unprecedented growth owes all its dues to the unimaginable benefits that artificial intelligence has brought to the plate of mankind for the very first time. It was never before imagined that external machines could aid us with such sophistication as is present today. Owing to this, it is imperative that an individual, irrespective of his/her calling, must have at least a superficial knowledge about the past advances and future possibilities of this field of study. Even if it is the job of scientists and engineers to figure out solutions using machine learning and data science, the solutions, undoubtedly is bound to affect all our lives in the upcoming years. Moreover, if you are planning to plug into the huge well of job openings in data science, exploring the past and upcoming trends in this field will surely take you a step ahead.
Looking back on the achievements of the year 2019, there is much which has happened. Here is a brief glimpse of what Trends in Data Science of 2019 looked like:
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Accessible AI
The once-popular belief that AI technology was only meant for high-scale and high-tech industries, is now an old wives’ tale. AI has spread so rapidly across every phase of our lives, that sometimes we do not even realize that we are being aided by AI. For instance, recommendations that we get on online forums are something we have become very used to in recent times. However, very few have the conscious knowledge that the recommendations are regulated by AI technology. There are also several instances where a layman can use AI to get optimized outputs, like in automated machine learning pipelines. We even have improvised AI-aided security systems, music systems and voice assistants in our very homes! Overall, the impact of AI in everyday lives saw a massive boost in 2019, and it is only bound to increase.
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The rapid growth of IoT products
As was already forecasted, the number of machines/devices which came online in 2019 was immense. Billions were invested in research to back the uprising IoT industry. Today it is nothing out of the ordinary to control home appliances like television and air conditioners with our smartphones or lock our and unlock our cars from even the opposite end of the globe. Bringing devices online not only makes the user experience far smoother but also generates crucial data for analysis. With such data, several unopened gates can be explored across several domains. The investments and count of IoT devices are expected to go up at an increasing rate in the upcoming years.
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Evolution of Predictive Analysis
The concept of predictive analysis is to use past data to learn recurring patterns, such that it can predict outcomes of future events based on the patterns learnt. Today, with increasing data it becomes extensively important to make use of optimized predictive solutions. Big data comes into picture here and significant advancements have been made in 2019 about it. Tools like PySpark and MLLib have helped scale simple predictive solutions to extensive data.
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Migration of Dark Data
Dark data is very old data which has probably been sitting in obsolete archives like old systems or even files in storage rooms! There is a general understanding that such unexplored data can show us the way to crucial insights about past trends which can help grab useful opportunities and even avoid unwanted loopholes. Therefore, there has been visible initiatives to make dark data more available to present-day systems with the help of efficient storage and migration tools.
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Implementation of Regulations
In 2018, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) brought in a few data governance rules to emphasize the importance of data governance. The rules were laid down so fast that even at the year-end, several companies dealing with data are still trying to comply wholly with all the principles laid down. These principles have not only created a standard for data consumption and data handling domains but are also bound to shape the future of data handling with great impact.
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DataOps
DataOps is an initiative to bring in some order in the way the data science pipeline functions. It is essentially a reflection of agile and DevOps methods in the field of data science. In 2019, it has been one of the major concerns of management in data science to integrate DataOps into their respective teams. Previously, such integration was not possible since the generic pipeline was still in making or under research. However, now, with a more robust structure, integrating DataOps can mean wonders for data science teams.
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Edge Computing
As stated by Gartner, Inc. cloud computing and edge computing has evolved to become a complementary model in 2019. Edge computing goes by the concept of “more the proximity (or closeness to the source of computation), better is the efficiency”. Edge computing allows workloads to be located closer to the consumers and thus, reduces latency several-fold.
There is, however, a huge recurring gap when it comes to the need and availability of skilled people who can launch and contribute to these developments significantly. India contributed to 6% of job openings worldwide in 2019, which scales to around 97000 jobs!
The job trends of 2019 looked as follows:
- BFSI sector had a massive demand for analytics professionals, followed by the e-commerce and telecom sectors. The banking and financial sectors continued to have high demand throughout.
- Python served as a great skill to attract employers to skilled job seekers
- A 2% increase in jobs offering over 15 Lakh per annum was observed
- Also, 21% of jobs demanded young talent in data science, a great contrast to all previous years. 70% of job openings were for professionals with less than 5 years of experience.
- The top in-demand designations were Analytics Manager, Business Analyst, Research Analyst, Data Analyst, SAS Analyst, Analytics Consultants, Statistical Analyst and Hadoop Developer
- Big data skills like Hadoop and Spark were extremely in demand due to the growing rate of data.
- Telecom industry saw a fall in demand for data science professionals.
- The median salary of analytics jobs was just over 11 Lakh per annum.
On to 2020 now!
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