You may have heard this latest speculation that Data is the new oil. These days, it’s not just about having lots of data, except you have a good question to answer or a solution to proffer. Data science is the main focus of most sciences and studies right now, it needs a lot of things like AI, programming, statistics, business understanding, effective presentations skills and much more. That’s why it’s not easy to understand or study. But we can do it as a country and a continent.
Data science has become the standard solving problem framework for academia and the industry and it’s going to be like that for a while. But we need to remember where we are coming from, who we are and where we are going. Data is an essential resource that powers research, the information economy in much the way that oil has fueled the industrial economy.
For example, Harvard Medical School published research comparing the accuracy of machine learning systems against human pathologists in detecting breast cancer. The machine learning was 92% accurate, which is good. But humans were 96% accurate. Case closed, right?
In short of what of these points are:
We have a lot of data with us, but we are not still utilizing it, therefore, we can not draw out insights from it.
In the digital world we are in, everything is now data-driven. Data has become the most valuable resource on the planet. However, our data needs to be ethically extracted, refined, distributed and monetized. Like the way oil has driven growth and produced wealth for powerful nations, the next wave of growth is driven by Data – and will be for a long time.
Strategy Lead, STEMi Makers Africa.
contact@stemiafrica.org, stemimakerafrica@gmail.com
+234-809-272-9114, +234-703-759-8505