Monetizing Your Data

CHAPTER 9Data Science: Making It Smart

Data science is becoming more prominent in everyday analytical exercises, especially around big data. A good example of this is in the car industry. Your local car dealership may be paying for anonymized search data to understand what cars you might want to purchase. In Jacob LaRiviere's article, “Where Predictive Analytics Is Having the Biggest Impact,” he writes about a car dealership leveraging big data and data science to optimize inventory.

[B]ig data solution leverages the previously unused data point that people do a considerable amount of social inquiry and research online before buying a car. The increased prediction accuracy, in turn, makes it possible to achieve large increases in operational efficiency—having the right inventory in the right locations.

By applying data science, we derive greater insight from the information that can be used to guide someone to potentially overlooked opportunities and issues. In the case of the car dealership, they extract web search data for each dealership location to understand what cars are in higher demand in those locations, thereby adjusting stock levels due to anticipated demand.

To empower your analytics, you need to use data science techniques. Data science helps you turn information into insights that are actionable by employing techniques from many fields, including statistics, operations research, information science, and computer science. There are numerous data science techniques, ...