Improving fact-based decision making instead of selling more bananas

“Recently I’ve started an assignment for a government organization as a data analyst. My main role is to support a decision making process with objective information. I cannot go into the details but these are the general ideas.rnrnI do that in couple of ways:rnu003colu003ern tu003cliu003eImproving the actual decision making process by implementing data driven systems. This is an automated way of providing additional information for the decision makers to help them make the most objective decision about the subject. For example if there is relevant historical data about the subject it can be provided in a concise way as part of a current application. For this I used basic statistics and text clustering techniques.u003c/liu003ern tu003cliu003eWorking on ad-hoc/one time analyses for exploratory purposes, using exploratory data analysis and statistics techniques. For example if someone has an idea how to improve a process but they would like to know whether the idea holds ground in the data.u003c/liu003ern tu003cliu003eBuilding dashboards to provide information on a regular basis. Such as tracking performance, showing predictions, etc.u003c/liu003ernu003c/olu003ernThe technology is based on Microsoft Azure and most of the data analysis/data science work is being done using Python and Spark. For data visualization I am using Python and Tableau.rnrnSo far I’m really enjoying this assignment. First of all, it’s challenging. What I especially like about it is that it’s not just a technical challenge but also an analytical challenge. If I’m working on something I not only need to know how to build it but I also have to think about it from different perspectives. Does it make sense statistically? How is it going to affect people that will work with it? We think a lot about changes that we are working on and whether their implementation will have positive effects in the end.rnrnWhat I also really enjoy is working on problems in the public sector. I feel like my work will impact the greater good (even if it’s just a marginal effect) unlike for example trying to sell more bananas.”