A Session with Mr. Vinayak Pai

Vinayak Pai is the Program Director, Data and Analytics Solutions in Mindtree.

Mindtree Limited is an Indian multinational information technology and outsourcing company. Mr. Pai was an honored speaker who was present to speak on the topic of ‘Crucial Steps in Data Science’.

Mr. Pai explained the Lifecycle of data Science. The first step is Data Collection. The first task is to collect data from both internal and external sources. The various data sources could be –logs from webservers, social media data, data from online repositories like Census datasets, web scraping or data could be present in an excel or can come from any other source. The next task is to identify the variables which should be very clear before starting any operation on the collected data.  Data acquired is usually not in a usable format to run the required analysis and might contain missing entries, inconsistencies and semantic errors. Now, by manual editing, the data scientists clean and reformat the data by writing codes or in the spreadsheets. This helps the data scientists in making assumptions and selecting the models they can apply to get analysis results. Now comes one of the most important steps in any data analysis i.e. having the right questions. It should be very clear at this stage the purpose for which the data is being collected and the results which is to be derived from it. Everything done right, if this step goes wrong, the whole analysis will be of no use. After that comes the analysis of data. This step includes the selection of models which will be used in the analysis. Using the right models and tools the data the analysis is done and all of the above steps are iterated as data is acquired continuously and business understandings become clearer. The final step is to visualize the obtained result and apply it in operations.

Then Mr. Pai explained the how these all steps have an impact on the business. Data collection, data storage, data tagging, data linking, asking the right question, data analysis, visualization all these steps lead to the business impact which is the main concern for any organization- what impact the results will have on the profit or functioning of the organization. Ultimately the goal of all of these is to optimize profit and to ensure the smooth functioning of the organization. Data scientists play an inevitable role in ensuring this goal.

Mr. Pai delivered a flawless speech and the keen audience benefited a lot from his valuable session. He concluded by saying that “Solution is more important, not the tools”.

A Session with Miss Madhumita Ghosh

Miss Madhumita Ghosh : “ Delivering Science in a very artistic way.” 

It is said that, “In God we Trust, all others must bring data.”

Miss Madhumita Ghosh must have known the importance of such a statement and that is why she was well equipped with examples to substantiate her arguments.

When Miss Madhumita Ghosh started working in the Accelya Kale Solutions Limited she was introduced to her peers as someone who “prepares graphs and charts”, and that’s where she knew how misguided people were about analytics.

According to her data Analytics is made up of 4 C’s.

The First C is curiosity and yes curiosity killed the cat but here it works kind of the opposite. Not questioning as to what’s happening leads people to an abyss where there is only data churning and no business sense is made.

The Second C is capturing which simply means understanding the essence of the data which in many case scenarios the client never has and it’s the analyst’s job to make the client understand the data.

The third C is Curation.After the cause has been found out its important that we create, manage and maintain activities to validate the business sense that we made in the previous step.

The Fourth is Crunching and after the crunching of the number is done you churn and churn and churn.

In her 20 minute address never does she mentions the importance of any statistical tool which the entire world and many management graduates are going ga-ga over. She believes that the key lies in the core fundamentals. She quotes examples of our grandmothers and how they were better analysts that many of us since they made financial budgets for their families day in and day out and that too for years.

Miss Madhumita Ghosh’s words were backed up with logic and sense, her belief that data is not important data sense is now what we believe in DBE and more importantly making sense out of Data, isn’t it what Analytics is all about?

 

Vishleshan ‘2015 – Annual Analytics Conclave

Vishleshan 2015, the flagship event of the Department of Business Economics, like every year, started off in high spirits and till the very end, no one could dampen it. With a complete analytics focus, it provided a platform for analytics industry and student community interaction.

Continuing with the tradition, the event was graced by presence of esteemed corporate honchos starting with Mr. Ankur Singh, Director-Analysis, dunnhumby, followed by Mr. Rajesh Kumar Shukla, AVP Decision Analytics, EXL Service. Following him was Ms. Debleena Datta, Senior Manager. The following session was by Mr. Anurag Srivastava, Manager, Deloitte Consulting.

Post high tea, began stat-wars in which 4 short listed teams gave presentations in front of 3 member jury panel, which consisted of corporates from Deloitte Consulting and a fortune 500 credit card company. The winner of Stat-wars was Team JnJ, DBE and the runner-up was Team VinA_IIMRanchi, IIM Ranchi.
After lunch, the second corporate speak session started at 2:30pm with Mr. Krishna Kumar, Head, India Operations, Abzooba. Following him was Ms. Susmita Nandi, Practice Manager, Bluestar Infotech. This was followed by Mr. Anshul Goyal, Analytics Head – India, Capillary Technologies.