What is the Role of Mathematicians in data analysis?

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What is the Role of Mathematicians in data analysis?
Mathematics is often regarded by regular individuals as just one of the academic subjects

that is required in the classroom. They never really realize how mathematics is part of everyone’s

daily lives. Mathematics is almost part of everything we do as individuals, from simple

calculation of the amount of food we buy to more complicated data analysis.

The Business Dictionary defines data analysis as “the process of evaluating data using

analytical and logical reasoning to examine each component of the data provided.” (Business

Dictionary, 2020) From the term definition alone, it can already be assumed that Mathematics is

part of data analysis.

Mathematics plays a big role in the conduct of data analysis because mathematical

concepts are the foundation used in coming up with analytical patterns and algorithms that are

needed in the performance of data analysis. For example, statistical and probability theories are

vital in the performance of various statistical analysis such as regression analysis, Naïve Bayes’

Classifiers, logistic regression, neural networks, decision trees and K-Means clustering. Data

analysis is not limited to statistics. It also uses algorithms to aid researches in making

predictions. These hundreds of machine learning algorithms utilizes mathematics in carrying out

their data analysis functions.

Some of the most essential mathematics and statistics use in data analysis are linear

algebra, calculus, descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Linear algebra is commonly use

in applications that has something to do with text analysis, dimensionality reduction or image

recognition. Some of the mathematical techniques used in the implementation of linear algebra

are vectors, 2-D matrices, and scalars. Techniques use in linear algebra that are specific to data

analysis are single value decomposition, Eigenvalue decomposition ad principal component

What is the Role of Mathematicians in data analysis?
analysis. Calculus, on the other hand, plays a big role in data analysis especially when the data

requires optimization techniques. With calculus, artificial neural networks and mathematical

modeling are able to be carried out.

Statistics is almost equated to data analysis. It starts with collection of data, analysis and

then the interpretation of the collected data. Comparing data analysis to cars, cars are nothing

when if there is no fuel to run it. Data analysis is also nothing when it is not run by statistics. The

generated statistics is used to put meanings to the collected data. The raw data is taken care of by

statistics for organizations and companies to come up with sound data-driven decisions. It

utilizes various tools and features that helps one to put meaning to the massive amount of data

put in front of them. Data is meaningless when it is not organized and analyzed correctly.

Statistical analysis can be in the form of descriptive statistics or inferential statistics.

Descriptive statistics provides an information that is used to describe the data. It basically

assumes normal distribution and measures of central tendency are described by the mean, median

and mode. The direction of the data can be assessed based on its skewness and the kurtosis.

Variability of the data from the mean of the can be describe using the range, standard deviation,

variance and inter-quartile ranges. This also tells us how spread data collected. Inferential

statistics on the other hand used to guide researchers on the decisions to be made in the results of

the tests made. There are several techniques that can be implemented for inferential statistics

depending on the type of data collected. These can include among others, Central Limit

Theorem, hypothesis testing, ANOVA and qualitative data analysis.

What is the Role of Mathematicians in data analysis?
Regardless of how simple the data analysis an individual does like analyzing which

grocery store is the most beneficial to him or how complex the data analysis an individual is

about to undertake, Mathematics will always be the foundation in making such analysis.
What is the Role of Mathematicians in data analysis?

References:

Business Dictionary. (2020). “Data Analysis.” Retrieved from

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/data-analysis.html