Sexy geeks get the best jobs

A Harvard Business Review article recently described being a “Data Scientist” as the sexiest job around. Somehow it is difficult to see “quants” or those involved in number crunching as being sexy. But they apparently are.

I guess nothing is sexier than having a lot of money and these days, so called data scientists are supposedly worth their weight in gold. There aren’t too many of them. And data is becoming the world’s new and most important resource.

The trend started about a couple of decades or so ago and accelerated in recent years. Google showed how a bunch of geniuses who knew how to work with algorithms could revolutionize the way we live and in the process, make a lot of money.

Then there is Amazon.com the digital company that turned the world of marketing and shopping upside down. Reaching out to consumers and making a sale had never been more targeted until Amazon showed how to do it. Indeed, if you are an Amazon customer, it probably knows more about you and can predict your behavior better than you.

Welcome to the world of Big Data. That’s the avalanche of information we are creating every second with every little thing we do. By themselves, the data bits may be inconsequential to everyone else but us. But taken with other data being generated everywhere, everything is significant, even lifesaving.

Take something like the seasonal influenza or flu. Google once demonstrated that it could predict the intensity of the seasonal outbreak and even point the regions where it would be most intense. Google did it by analyzing Google search… all three billion generated daily and compared with historical data on flu outbreaks of the US Center for Disease Control.

Google’s software managed to find the combination of 45 search items, when used together in a mathematical model, had a strong correlation between their prediction and the official figures. As the book Big Data reports it, Google, like the government’s CDC, could tell where the flu had spread. But unlike CDC, Google could also tell it in real time, not a week or two after.

The two Obama campaigns for the White House were managed by “quants” or computer geeks who were able to devise a system better able to reach out to individual voters than that provided by traditional approaches. Indeed, traditional surveys or opinion polls that utilized representative sampling, by themselves, may have seen better days. Data scientists who mine Big Data are now able to better read the sentiment of the target population.

A defining moment in the last Obama campaign was when otherwise respected opinion pundits in the major mainstream media were almost ready to concede the election to former Gov.Romney after Obama faltered in the first debate. One quant, Nate Silver, who did earlier work predicting sports outcomes, stubbornly called the election for Obama. He got it right.

In the November 2008 presidential election, Silver correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states. In the 2012 presidential election, he correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Now Nate Silver is saying that the world of journalism has changed to embrace Big Data. In a recent interview with Geek Wire, Silver said that young journalists must now learn how to code.

Knowing how to write and report are obviously important skills a journalist must have, Silver said but “if you’re an aspiring journalist who knows how to code really well, you are in a very hot market.”

Silver has established FiveThirtyEight or what he calls the newsroom of the future, a data journalism site. He said their coverage will span five major subject areas — politics, economics, science, life and sports.

“Our team also has a broad set of skills and experience in methods that fall under the rubric of data journalism. These include statistical analysis, but also data visualization, computer programming and data-literate reporting. So in addition to written stories, we’ll have interactive graphics and features. “

Silver also envisions FiveThirtyEight to be producing less text-based content and more visual and interactive types of pieces — the kind of stories that will require employees with programming knowledge. It is starting to happen now as younger digital natives are relying more on online news sites accessed through their smart phones than mainstream media for their news source.

Silver is right. A journalist who understands Big Data today and knows how to use this knowledge will be able to write more insightful articles about the world we live in. A journalist with the skills of a data scientist will be better able to explain developments and more accurately predict eventual outcomes.

During the launch of Analytika, an initiative designed to introduce data analytic skills in school curricula, an IBM executive cited a study which shows that in hiring people, most companies want job candidates who can analyze quantitative data, make decisions, solve problems and communicate clearly.

For new college graduates or those still in college or about to enter college, it is a good idea to get enough training in the skills required of data scientists. Today, it is no longer enough to know how to read, write and do basic math. 

Indeed, teaching our young people how to crunch Big Data is the very reason for Analytika when Mariels Almeda-Winhoffer thought of it shortly after she got the assignment to head IBM Philippines from her comfortable perch at the New York head office.

Mariels saw our flourishing BPO industry and was happy to see how it has been able to provide employment to so many young people and is a major dollar earner for the country. IBM itself has a significant presence in BPO. But Mariels was not satisfied.

The impression I got from several conversations with her through the past two years is that being a Filipino herself, she wanted more for the country. She wanted to go beyond BPOs. She wanted to make the Philippines a global center for smarter analytics.

Nice dream but how can this happen? We don’t have the skills Analytics require. We will need to change or at least augment existing college curricula and that’s not easy to do. Inertia, both at the government and private schools level can be difficult to overcome.

Luckily, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED)had Patricia Licuanan as chair. She was as enthusiastic as Mariels in getting the educational system geared to provide the brain power needed to make us a global center for smarter analytics.

If we are already happy with the dollar earnings of our BPO industry today, Mariels explained, being a global center for smarter analytics will bring multiples of that.

According to Mariels, the Philippines is well positioned to capture a good part of the estimated $212-billion global market opportunity for Analytics. It is possible to bring in at least 200,000 analytics jobs in the Philippines in the next five years. But we must be ready to absorb this opportunity.

And Mariels believes that the Philippines is well-positioned to cash in on analytics. “Since this is an emerging discipline, if we move with the right strategy and speed, as we did in BPO, we are well positioned to be the global center for smarter analytics.”

Mariels is particularly grateful that Dr. Licuanan of CHED took this vision and made it a reality. “Through Dr. Licuanan’s leadership, the Philippines became the first country to declare analytics as a profession-through a Memorandum Order that incorporated analytics in the undergraduate curricula for Business and IT… By 2015, we will start having some Filipino graduates, ready to take on the industry requirements for analytics.”

Among the schools that have adopted the CHED curriculum for Analytics include UP, Ateneo, La Salle, Asian Institute of Management and Asia PacificCollege.

Mariels also did more to show how analytics can help improve government services. She arranged for the donation of a P60-million IBM supercomputer, the IBM Blue Gene, to the Department of Science and Technology. The country’s first supercomputer, it is now being used for among others, weather prediction, disaster management, agriculture and genomics. 

I was talking with DOST Sec. Mario Montejo during the Analytika launch and he told me that at first he thought they would not be able to fully utilize the IBM supercomputer. They were initially worried about the costs of maintaining the computer in a humidity-controlled and air conditioned environment. But now, it is fully utilized.

I agree with Mariels that the best is yet to come for this country. But Mariels is only here for a limited time. She will likely be up for reassignment soon. In any case, we cannot depend on IBM to continue to spearhead a program that should be a national priority. The next moves are totally ours.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco