U.S. Has a New Chief Data Scientist
The data age has arrived. From crowd-sourced product reviews to real-time traffic alerts, “big data” has become a regular part of our daily lives. In 2013, researchers estimated that there were about 4 zettabytes of data worldwide: That’s approximately the total volume of information that would be created if every person in the United States took a digital photo every second of every day for over four months! The vast majority of existing data has been generated in the past few years, and today’s explosive pace of data growth is set to continue. In this setting, data science — the ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex data sets — is fundamentally important.
While there is a rich history of companies using data to their competitive advantage, the disproportionate beneficiaries of big data and data science have been Internet technologies like social media, search, and e-commerce. Yet transformative uses of data in other spheres are just around the corner. Precision medicine and other forms of smarter health care delivery, individualized education, and the “Internet of Things” (which refers to devices like cars or thermostats communicating with each other using embedded sensors linked through wired and wireless networks) are just a few of the ways in which innovative data science applications will transform our future.