The world of Analytics
Going beyond Iris-Setosa and the Titanic classification
One of the most fundamental , and indeed, most interesting aspects of Analytics is that is near omni-present across many economic sectors today. This ubiquity offers a great deal of opportunities , but also can be very confusing to those who want to get their foot in the door and become data analysts. Much is discussed about what it entails to be a Data Scientist, Data Engineer or Analyst or a Machine Learning Engineer, however is not often that these roles are described within the context of the industry they serve. Analytics is driven by questions that can come from any entity or industry that generates data (read , virtually all of human society), and without those questions, its practice is meaningless.
With that in mind , I wanted to explore some less known roles a Data Analyst may found him or herself involved with.
Game Analyst
A game analyst is a relatively unknown role for a data analyst, but I personally consider it to be one of the most interesting ones. The role of the data analyst in a video game project is to set relevant key performance indicators (KPI´s) that are relevant to the game’s performance as a product and to try to determine what features and design decisions will help the game to work better and to impact a larger audience. Game analyst are featured most prominently at the mobile and MMO market , as these are products that experiment constant expansion and evolution throughout their life cycle.
Musical/Fashion Trends Analyst
Can something as inherently subjective as the music and fashion industries can be subjected to predictive analysis? Some people believe that it is possible, after all, both the music and fashion industries collect massive amounts of data through different means and interactions with their target audiences. A data analyst in either of these industries will likely be tasked with designing predictive algorithms that try to target specific content and trends to users based on demographic data, user surveys and social media interactions. An analyst in this role will likely have a keen interest in these industries and will probably enjoy working with designers, sound producers , musicians and various creative minds in order to develop new and exciting products.
Environmental /Urban Planning Analyst
Some people relish at the thought of organizing and populating beautiful cities that are optimally designed for a great quality of life. Or maybe they are fully committed to the cause of fighting climate change. Either way , they may be interested to work as Environmental and Urban Planning Analyst.
This flavor of analysts will collect data on urban interactions (traffic flow, pollution measurements, population density etc) or on environmental metrics in order to assist with urban planning , city policy or to track rising temperatures across the planet in order to create a more sustainable future for human society. Here analytics intersects with many disciplines such as architecture, engineering , environmental sciences and even government and law enforcement, making it a very expansive and varied analytics branch.
Healthcare Analyst
A healthcare analyst is someone that gathers patient and human health data from various sources and tries to develop algorithms and techniques to help organizations to provide better care for its patients, lower healthcare costs or aiding in preventive medicine.
One of the most popular applications of Healthcare Analytics is the profiling of patients based on their medical history and personal feature characteristics, which consists in using patient data with the hope that life style indicators, genetic markers or past medical complications can be used to predict future medical conditions with a degree of reliability. Healthcare Analytics features a good degree of scientifically complex data, and the analyst will have to be at least familiar with medical concepts in order to provide valuable insight.
Do anyone of these roles interest you ? note how the job descriptions for all of them may be similar and ,barring some specific tools or technologies, all these roles are functionally identical. All these analyst will collect data, clean it, process it through an algorithm or a framework and then produce useful visualization to assist with the decision making process.
What will be different , though , is the data you will be working on. Are you excited about videogames, the environment, business or medical science? Data Analytics will help you get a place within any one of these industries.
