How Data Science Improves Decision Making in Real Life! | 7wData

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Data Scientist as a term sounds so intimidating, right? Like someone who invents data-related stuff to serve humanity. No! I mean Yes, obviously some people have done their doctorates in Statistics or Computing and who constantly work hard to come up with algorithms and all. But, do you know that ‘Data science’ is a very generalized term which has been defined in the 21ˢᵗ century but has been out there since forever.

In fact, in the year 1962, John W. Tukey wrote in his book “The Future of Data Analysis”:

“For a long time, I thought I was a statistician, interested in inferences from the particular to the general. But as I have watched mathematical Statistics evolve, I have had cause to wonder and doubt. I have come to feel that my central interest is in Data Analysis, and the parts of statistics which adhere to it must take on the characteristics of science rather than those of mathematics.”

We use data to come to conclusions daily. I entered college three years ago and within a few days, subconsciously categorized people whether they would good or bad for me to know which ones should I befriend. This is what is known as Biased Analysis. It was such a novice mistake- using 10 Day data-points to predict the behavior of people, who have lived over 20 years. A very small sample indeed!

I am still learning these techniques and while I am doing it, I keep on thinking and searching about how I can use them to make my life better, besides helping me to fetch a job.

We waste a lot of time thinking about what to watch when we sit to watch a Movie/TV Show, or when you have to buy something. Well, whatever we watch or buy, it should be worthy of the amount of time or money we spend on making that decision.

In this article, I will talk about what tools you can use to solve the kind of problems I am talking about and how a beginner can apply them.

It’s 9 P.M. I am not in a mood to study. Let’s watch a movie. But, I have to sleep by 12 as well. Many a time, it happens that I want to watch a movie, and when I sit down to browse, I spend most of my time browsing and by the time I pick up something, it’s time to sleep. Netflix recommends you watch new movies based on your viewing history. But, there’s a limitation. Netflix can only recommend the movies that it has in its library. Let’s create a bigger list of movies we have watched and By making a personal movie recommender system, you can avoid all of this hassle. This may be a bit complicated for a beginner. But, if you have an idea of basic ML models you can try this out in a different way. Create a dataset by feeding-in all the movies you have watched along with their IMDB scores, genre, major actors, language, director, etc. and give them a personal rating out of 10. Use this personal rating as the target variable, pick a validation approach, and then use the appropriate modeling technique on it. In a similar manner, gather a list of all the movies that you want to watch and using the above-fitted model, try to get the predicted ratings on each of them! What’s next? Start watching these movies in descending order and enjoy it! I have always been this guy who would avoid his emotions and would distract himself if something serious would pop into his head. The pandemic made me realize how important it is to face your emotions, scrutinize them and then let them go.