8 Major Applications of Data Science

Nikita Joshi

Content Curator

Data Science involves the use of statistical tools and techniques to transform data into actionable insights. Data Science has become one of the most in-demand industries with applications in various sectors. Data Science techniques are used in a number of sectors including finance, healthcare, airlines, drug development, transport, and e-commerce.

1. Fraud and Risk Detection

The earliest applications of data science were in the Finance industry due to challenges faced by the companies. Data science was employed to combat losses and debts that banks had to endure. Data science allows banks to identify trends and potential problems substantially faster. By processing valuable data, it can analyze individual customers’ financial information, loans the person has taken in the past, overall income, and debts (if any). It also helps to classify and segment the transaction data to find out any patterns that might predict any kind of fraud.

2. Search Engines

Search engines such as Google utilize Data Science algorithms to find the most relevant websites for any query, by analyzing the number of visits from customers and their relevance. For example, Dominos appears as the first search result when you search the term "pizza stores" in Internet Explorer. This is due to the fact that Domino's is among the top most visited websites when looking for pizza stores or other related information.

3. Transport

Data Science methodologies are used in self-driving cars. Driverless cars use information that is fed into their software to figure out the speed limit for roads, busy streets as well as narrow roads, and many more. This helps reduce the risk of accidents. All this data is discovered through Data Science.

4. E-commerce

In this highly competitive world, customer satisfaction is the top-most priority of all businesses. Even e-commerce websites like Amazon, Myntra, etc. use Data Science to enrich the user experience with tailored recommendations. For instance, while searching for something on any e-commerce portal, many times we get suggestions of similar products within the same price range. This is done with the help of Data Science and is beneficial in pitching more sales.

5. Healthcare

Data science has proved to be a boon for the healthcare industry especially in detecting tumours, drug discoveries, medical image analysis, genetics and genomics, predictive modelling for diagnosis, etc. Besides these, there are several areas of healthcare where Data Science can help in efficient diagnosis, data management, medical research, and much more.

6. Image Recognition

Data Science is utilized in auto-tagging and image recognition. Through the use of Machine Learning and Data Science algorithms, Facebook can store data that is related to image recognition. It can recognize faces in a photograph taken in groups and suggest auto-tagging.

7. Airline Routing Planning

Data Science is used in a variety of areas in the airline industry. Data Science is used to find out traveller behavioural data to find out the demand for specific city pairs and pricing flights accordingly. It eliminates the use of any third-party travel agents. Data Science techniques can help predict flight delays. It also helps to decide whether to land directly at the destination or take a halt in between. 

8. Medicine and Drug Development

The process of developing medicine was a challenging procedure in the past because it involved multiple lab experiments to determine the success of a drug. With the help of Data Science algorithms, it is now possible to estimate the effectiveness of a medicine by using past information. These algorithms can predict the actions of a chemical or drug using advanced mathematical models and simulations, rather than laboratory experiments.