Dealing with big data is increasingly necessary as the growth in the amount of data the human species generated via text, video, tweets, etc. over the last few years has been nothing short of remarkable; the projected growth over the next few years is even more spectacular. In fact, the 2013 IDC Digital Universe Study projects that the amount of data will increase 10-fold from 4.4 trillion GB to 44 trillion GB.

These mass quantities of data can help us answer some really big questions like:

• What factors will affect the food distribution systems needed to feed the world when the population reaches 8 billion people?
• Which driver characteristics are best at predicting automobile accidents?
• How can we predict the genetic factors that affect the spread of cancer?
• Is there an optimal way to allocate resources in my company across a certain geographic region without draining resources?
• Will the long-term effects of deflategate affect future Super Bowl wins for the Pats?

Answering questions like these requires analyzing and understanding the vast amounts of data that is being collected by many different organizations. In order to be able to make intelligent, actionable decisions, academia, industry, and government are all turning to data scientists.

Data scientists are the decision makers of the future; they help analyze these enormous sources of data and extract actionable knowledge from these large stores. Their ability to extract gems of wisdom from large amounts of data is useful not only for answering big questions like the ones posed above but also smaller questions that are necessary for small organizations or individuals. In fact, there's almost no walk of life that isn't affected by the ability to analyze large amounts of data and extract knowledge.

Data scientists can contribute to our understanding and evaluation of society, business, human behavior, and even nature itself. Those who have the ability to work with quantitative and qualitative data, big and small, to identify puzzles, probe questions, evaluate claims, make inferences, and posit answers to problems will be well-positioned to expand knowledge, influence policy, and be the decision makers of the future.

Are you interested in becoming a data scientist? Learn more about Fitchburg State's new Data Science graduate certificate and speak to the chair of the program at our upcoming information session. Register today!

Thanks to guest blogger, Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department, Ricky J. Sethi, Ph.D., for sharing this post.