My Thoughts on “Data Science and its Relationship to Big Data and Data-Driven Decision Making”

Provost and Fawcett’s article on Data science and its relationship to big data and data-driven decision making provides an analytical perspective on why companies are and should exploit data for their competitive advantage. The author’s begin by defining data science as ” a set of principles and practices that support and guides the extraction and analysis of information of data”.  Provost, F & Fawcett, T, (2013) Data science and its relationship to big data and data-driven decision making, Vol 1, No1, P52. 

Prior, data science was mainly used by marketers for target marketing, online advertisements and cross-selling. However, companies like Wal-Mart have adopted this approach in the past when Hurricane Frances was approaching by using predictive patterns from an earlier hurricane. Wal-Mart gained their competitive advantage as they were able to predict scarce demands for products.

Ultimately what Provost and Fawcett want to show is that data science is important and that it can help firm’s make data-driven decisions and subsequently lead to an increase in a firm’s productivity. However, in order for this to be achieved data science must be considered on its own in order to realise its capacity.

In overall, data science can be considered as a good marketing strategy for firms as it can help businesses analyse their customer behaviours and be able to determine trends and patterns in which they can personalise marketing demands and campaigns to fill gaps in the market such as Wal-Mart did.

Reference: Provost, F., & Fawcett, T. (2013). Data Science and its Relationship to Big Data and Data-Driven Decision Making. Big Data, 1(1), 51-59.