An Eyeopener

For someone who is a novice and comes from a background that is far from data science, this course was an eye-opener. Of course, at the onset I already had some knowledge about the potentials of data science, but I never realized that there are a lot of real-world applications for this new field. One of the main reasons why I took this course even at a relatively advanced age (compared to the other students) is that I wanted to change an industry that should be data driven but as of the moment was more reliant on traditional analytics. I am not saying that this is wrong, but a lot of real estate industry professionals are still relying more on experience compared to actual data when making business decisions. I observed that in other countries, there is a wealth of data about everything related to real property transactions, I found it unsettling that in the Philippines there is relatively no data available to base decisions from.

One of the most important things I learned from this class is that data science is not a “magic wand” and that it is not a “cure-all” for all problems that is currently being faced by a particular organization. Yes it could lead to better decision-making but the real world is much more complex than what any data could represent or visualize. Managing expectations on the results of any data science project or venture is needed and should be grounded on what could actually be achieved given the set of possible constraints and inputs.

Another takeaway that I got from this course is that building relationships is one of the most important aspects in any data science undertaking. It may be with your principal or client, your team members, or with your data. Building a connection is a way of efficiently being able to understand the relationships between what is happening and what could happen in the future.

Lastly, and this is one of the more personal realizations that I have discovered while being a student of Data Science and probably what I will be reminding future Data Scientists: “Stay grounded. You will be amazed and dazzled by the results of what you could do with data science. You will be able to describe complex ideas with graphs and equations and show them in fantastic dashboards and charts. But once in a while, be sure to go out and look at the world and not just the graphs and diagrams that you can create to simulate what you understand about it. The world is too beautiful and complex than any representation we could describe it to be.”