An Information Technology (IT) Specialist, Sam Ebuka, has urged data scientists to explore the technology space to address the problems and needs of the country.
Ebuka, the founder of Tech Solutions, Abuja, made the call in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Friday.
He said that data science was not new in the country but had yet to be exploited for development.
He explained that “data science is not a new frontier in the digital economy but young learners have to be
encouraged with needed tools and information to become data scientists.”
He stressed the need for more scientists to embrace data science due to shortage of manpower
in the country.
According to him, data science has enabled various areas of human lives to be measured in an extraordinary way.
“The jobs of the future are very different. Today, for any economy to make precise predictions and solve complex
problems such as over population, poverty, unemployment, it will need data scientists who write codes and are able
to solve complex economic problems using software algorithms.”
He said that the next stage after the use of data for problem-solving was to graphically use data to predict future
trends, which could help in avoiding unforeseen circumstances.
Ebuka, therefore, called on government to employ more data scientists in relevant sectors of the economy to help in
critical decision making processes to advance sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing etc.
Data has been defined as facts or figures or information stored in a computer for use and can be a collection of words,
measurements, observations or even just pictorial descriptions.
Data becomes information when it is applied to some purpose and adds value for the recipient.
Data science enables the use of theoretical, mathematical, computational and other practical methods to study and evaluate data.
The key objective is to extract required or valuable information that may be used for multiple purposes, such as
decision making, product development, trend analysis and forecasting.
