Why data science has the potential to reshape society
In the What Matters To Me series, a Generation T honouree describes what they do, why they do it, and why it matters.
Stephanie Sy is the founder of data science consultancy Thinking Machines, which helps organisations mine their existing data to gain fresh insights. The Philippine company, which also has operations in Singapore, has worked for clients including the World Bank, Ayala Corporation and Unicef, while Stephanie herself has addressed the United Nations about technological innovation. Here, she describes her work in her own words.
See also: What Matters To Me: Tasya Farasya
Data science is the practice of taking large quantities of data we have access to right now and pulling insights out of it. The industry started more or less because of e-commerce. Pre-Amazon, why would you need this, right? But now you have your phone and it captures a lot of data about you. You interact with Facebook, WhatsApp, [Southeast Asian e-commerce leader] Lazada and many more. Every digital interaction you have leaves a data trail. Based on those data trails, people in our industry can understand what drives customer behaviour better. Through this we can create very personalised promotions or interventions targeted to individuals. There’s a data gathering part, a data engineering part, a machine learning part and a data visualisation part. Underlying all of that is data strategy—how do you, as an organisation, make better decisions about your customers or operations with the data you have available? It’s not inaccessible; it’s just a very new industry.
My favourite part of the job is hearing someone’s problem and coming up with a way to solve it that feels almost magical to them