9 Ways Data Science Is Changing Your Life For The Better

If you don’t take a step back and appreciate it, a lot of common tasks have become easier in the last couple of years.

In everyday life, the products we want are in our hands faster, the routes to where we’re going have become more efficient & cheaper, and our ability to connect with the people we want to connect with has become possible despite time, geographic and linguistic boundaries.

To be frank, there is one group of people who can truly be credited with this progress: Data scientists.

At the risk of oversimplifying what they do: Data scientists make smart-tech smart.

They take structured and unstructured information about us and the world, and make technology work based on these very human insights.

With Coding Dojo proudly helping push this progress with our Data Science Program, we thought we’d take a step back ourselves and look at how grads and other data scientists are changing your life for the better.

Here are real ways data science has changed your life.

You get products the same day you order them

Without being able to predict what you want to order and where you want it delivered, same-day delivery would be impossible. Companies like Amazon leverage the wisdom of data scientists to figure out what products different areas of the country are going to want before they actually order them. This allows them to keep the products in stock to be shipped right away. Moreover, delivery behemoths like UPS use machine-learning and AI to take into account traffic patterns, weather and other potential obstacles to optimize delivery routes.

You found your new favorite movie, show and music

There is a reason you can’t get off the couch once you start streaming: Recommendation systems. Taking into account your previous entertainment consumption, the consumption of other users, levels of consumption and, like, 107 other variables, recommendation systems like the ones at Netflix make sure that you are not only are you seeing creations you like, but they actually make original content based on the data they have.

You can speak to your devices

The idea of speech recognition for computers has been around for a while, but until data scientists brought in machine learning, they simply couldn’t work. Thanks to data science, devices can now truly pivot and continually evolve to understand their owner’s voices, the voices they sometimes hear and voices they’ve never heard before.

You get a ride right away for the cheapest possible price

When using a ride-share service like Lyft or Uber, being able to summon a car to your door with the tap of a button is just half the genius. Unlike traditional taxis, these services take into account everything going on at that moment in the ride-share ecosystem — demand, weather, traffic, distance to destination — in order to make sure you are paying the right price for your trip at the moment you take it.

Your favorite team got a lot better or a lot worse

It’s not just baseball where analytics have become so fundamental to the game that data scientists have become more important than assistant coaches. Whether it’s to optimize training, game strategy or recruitment, data has taken over every sport, from soccer to rowing to tennis.

You found your partner

It has been confirmed: Dating apps have fully subverted how we meet our significant others. Traditionally, we used to meet our romantic partners through friends & family, but thanks to matching technology that pairs us with the best possible person, data scientists have made it so about 40% of all heterosexual couples meet online with that number jumping to 60% for same-sex couples.

You took your bucket-list trip at a price you could afford

While the actual quality of flying has become a lot more suspect, the ability to actually get on a plane has become significantly easier & cheaper. Apps from Momondo to Hopper to Kayak are able to source multiple data sets and queries for different possible flights, destinations, times, and inventory to find you the most affordable ticket.

Your groceries are always in stock

When was the last time you went to a reputable grocery store and they didn’t have what you wanted in a place where you would naturally find it. Using consumption and consumer patterns, data scientists have made sure that not only are there enough turkeys available on Thanksgiving, but more niche items are in stock and placed strategically in the store where you might organically find them.

Your illness was found before it became really bad

While there are all kinds of wellness apps hitting the market, some of the health tech used by real medical professionals are really saving lives. For example, Google’s LYNA is designed to find breast cancer tumors that can metastasize to nearby lymph nodes. Leveraging past data sets, the tool has been 99% accurate in predicting future metastasization.