Analytics as a career by Ajay Ohri

1. Analytics and
Data Science as a career
Presented at
Data Analytics Summit hosted by WeekendR.in
At Delhi School of Economics
13 August 2016

2. Introducing
Let’s walk the talk

3. Ajay Ohri :Glorified Presenter
author of two books on R*
12 years in analytics
http://linkedin.com/in/ajayohri
*and 4 books on poetry

4. ● Author "R for Business Analytics"
● Author “ R for Cloud Computing”
● Founder "Decisionstats.com"
● University of Tennessee, Knoxville
MS (courses in statistics and
computer science)
● MBA (IIM Lucknow,India-2003)
● B.Engineering (DCE 2001)
http://linkedin.com/in/ajayohri
Ajay Ohri : Education

5. Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajay_Ohri
As Featured in
● IBM Big Data
http://ibmdatamag.com/author/aohri/
● Social Media Today
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/blogger-week-ajay-ohri
● Programmable Web
https://www.programmableweb.com/profile/ajayohri
● Wired
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/algorithmia/
● ReadWriteWeb
http://readwrite.com/2011/06/01/an-app-store-for-algorithms
● KDNuggets
http://www.kdnuggets.com/2014/05/guide-to-data-science-cheat-sheets.html
http://www.kdnuggets.com/2014/06/interview-ingo-mierswa-rapidminer-analytics-turning-points.html
http://linkedin.com/in/ajayohri
Ajay Ohri :mostly a writer

6. Agenda
What are we going to talk on

7. Agenda
Analytics as a career
Anecdotes -
working, consulting, writing, teaching
Do’s and Don’ts
Rewards and Risks
Career Journey
Alternative Careers

8. Analytics as a career
Good news ! You are both in high demand and low supply
Bad news ! You have to keep learning new stuff

9. Global Analytics
Started with Analytics in Finance, Telecom, Retail, et al
SAS and SPSS were two players
R made inroads post 2007
SAS still makes >2 billion dollars a year

10. Indian Analytics
Started with Knowledge Processing Outsourcing
A Brief History of Analytics in India
https://decisionstats.com/2015/11/02/brief-history-of-analytics
-in-india/
Continued with financial and telecom
Domestic analytics is not so advanced or saturated

11. Anecdotes -
Working - clients always want more that you can do comfortably
Consulting and IT pays more than BPO, KPO
Consulting on your own - clients always pay less that you want to be paid
Writing - writing is a painful way to make any money
Teaching - very satisfying way but for a non Phd very tough
Startups - get your stock options in writing
Analytics as a career

12. Do’s -
Need to have more than one skill - SAS , R, Python , Java (Hadoop)
Need to know enough Statistics
Need to have aptitude to learn business domain
Don’ts -
Balancing the three is tough- programming, stats, business
You can get locked into legacy software if you stop learning (eg Matlab)
Analytics as a career

13. Rewards-
Well paying (price = high demand / low supply)
Sustainable career path
Can branch out in interesting areas (gaming, entertainment, mobile)
Risks -
Can be initially stressful
Not recommended if you don’t like numbers
Analytics as a career

14. Entertainment-
How can we maximize probability of hit on given product (movie/serial)
Sports-
Which player for which IPL team
How to maximize Olympics medals on minimum cost
Social Media Analytics
How to improve the capabilities of your company’s
product and brand using data
Lucrative and nascent and spam shows bad analytics
Alternative Careers

15. Environmental-
How can we have progress without climate change
Using mobiles for data collection and Using cloud and big data for data
processing
Tax Enforcement-
Help improve tax enforcement and reduce corruption using data analytics
Counter Terrorism
How to improve the capabilities of your country using very noisy data
Very lucrative and very nascent
Alternative Careers

16. The world needs good data scientists,
you can have a great career in it
Data science career helps you
1. make money
2. having fun
3. doing something useful
Summary

17. Questions