The Power of Data

00:09 In 2018, people made 2.5 trillion bytes of information.

00:14 Each day. If you want to store this much information on regular 1 TB hard drives, you need 2.5 million of them.

00:22 Consider it.

00:24 How many Eiffel Towers would there be if you put these hard drives on top of each other? That's equal to 77 Eiffel Towers.

00:31 Each day. People think that this mountain of data will keep getting bigger and bigger in an exponential way. The new oil is data.

00:41 The Harvard Business Review said that the job of "data scientist" is the "sexiest job of the 21st century." AI and machine learning are topics that everyone is talking about. But why do companies have so much to gain from data? How do you find a way to get this treasure back? It's all about making better decisions based on what you learn from this data.

01:01 Many companies are already on their way to "insight-driven decision management," which is based on data. Data can be looked at both in the past and in the future.

01:12 It helps to organize the information around five questions.

01:16 What happened? That's the first question.

01:19 Analyses and descriptions.

01:21 Second question: What happened and why? Analysis for diagnosis.

01:28 Third, what can we learn from this? Analytics for discovery.

01:34 Fourth, what will happen in the future? Analytics of the future.

01:41 Fifth, what can we do to make something happen? Analytics that tell what to do.

01:48 The difficulty level goes up.

01:50 Getting the sales numbers for the last quarter from the database is much easier than making an accurate forecast.

01:57 But there are also businesses that haven't even gotten to the first step yet.

02:02 They go with their gut and their experience.

02:05 That doesn't sound too bad at first, but it's subjective and depends on the person.

02:11 Data also opens up completely new opportunities.

02:15 Algorithms can do complicated calculations in a split second.

02:18 For example, they can make personalized recommendations for each customer.

02:23 Levi's uses this to suggest items that add up to more than the free shipping limit.

02:29 As a result, it was able to increase sales by a huge amount.

02:34 One of the best things about data analysis is how people and machines work together.

02:39 An algorithm can't replace a doctor, but it can help him figure out what's wrong.

02:43 For example, algorithms can find pneumonia on X-rays more accurately than the average radiologist can.

02:50 For example, a drug company divides its marketing budget so that it has the most impact. It takes a lot of work to turn a company into one that is driven by data.

03:00 What information is already out there? Which needs to be put together? What IT systems do I need to do this? Which important numbers should be written down? And maybe also: Does the whole thing follow the laws that protect personal information? The building blocks of "insight-driven decision management" are what make it work.

03:23 First, the data needs to be kept in one place, called the "data warehouse." People usually think of data analytics as the study of specific questions.

03:34 Last but not least, data science is more about the big picture.

03:39 It has to do with which questions even need to be asked.

03:43 And the data are looked at in a more open-ended way.