Whether you realise it or not, data science is present in a lot of our modern lives. It is not just an everyday thing for the people working in IT, but a relevant part of the average person’s life. As long as you are a user of the internet and smart devices, chances are, you are reaping the benefits of data science. Need we say more? Here are some examples of how data science is ever-present in the contemporary world:
Internet searches
When you need to find out the answer to a pressing question, the first thing most people would do today is turn to Google. Or perhaps you prefer Bing or Yahoo – it doesn’t really matter. Search engines operate based on algorithms that scour through the millions of websites and rank them based on their relevance to your search. All these cannot be done without data science, which helps to handle the massive amounts of information from the websites of the world, and analyse them in terms of various factors such as subject matter, popularity, and so on. And all these happen in the blink of an eye – literally.
Targeted commercials
You may be browsing the web when you realise that you’ve been seeing banner ads on your search page for that very pair of shoes you were looking up last night. Tomorrow, you may start to see other similar types of shoe ads coming up on your Facebook feed. Is your computer reading your mind? Of course not – but it comes close, by using the power of data science. The internet tracks your every action, such as your search history, types of videos you watch on Youtube, and the things you buy online. For the marketing industry, this is a treasure trove of information that helps advertisers design and target ads to their target audience. This is immensely beneficial to marketers as it narrows down their use of resources to their desired audience who are most likely to make a purchase.
Image recognition
As you upload photos of your recent birthday party, you may realise that Facebook cleverly suggests for you to tag your friends, matching the right person to the right name. How does Facebook know this? This is possible through the power of data science! An algorithm studies the faces of people in photos, and the names that each face has been associated with before. With enough data, it is able to relate future photos of the same person to their name.
Google has also come up with a function where users can search for items using photos of it, which is very useful when you have no idea of what the object is called. By comparing your uploaded photo to the millions in their database, they can show you matching items, the name of the items, and where you can purchase them.
Speech recognition
Speaking to Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, or Cortana, you may be amazed at how these virtual assistants can recognise your voice and decipher what you are saying. Although these systems are not perfect, the speech recognition technologies that power them have come a long way. During the development stages, these virtual assistants would have been fed with large volumes of human speech, so that they are able to ‘learn’ the way humans speak, and how to respond to these utterances. While you are using the system, it continues to collect data to improve its speech recognition abilities. This is how virtual assistants like Siri and Google Assistant get better after every update and launch.
By now, you would have realised the ubiquity of data science in your life. If you are fascinated by the abilities of data science and how it helps to power new technologies and business solutions, you can learn more about it at a data science course in Singapore.