Data people need to have a clear sense of who they are
Continuously improving oneself, observing, understanding to choose and processing the right data are the shares highlighted by experts in Tech Innovator #2 livestream with the topic of “Mining the value of data”.
Following the success of the first issue of the Tech Innovators series of events, the second livestream was broadcast at 19:30 on July 26, on FPT Software’s fanpage, attracting a large number of followers. The program has reached nearly 228,000 people, more than 5,000 interactions and 765 questions submitted by the audience before and during the event.
During the 90-minute exchange, experts including Dr. Nguyen Duy Khuong with nearly 15 years of experience and research in Computer Science, especially in AI and Data industries, and MA Ha Dinh – currently Data Scientist of Shopify in Canada, under the leadership of CAIO FSOFT Nguyen Xuan Phong. The two speakers had lively discussions around the topic of data.
Dr. Duy Khuong has been “charmed” by Data Science since 2008, when this field was still new. Curiosity at how “giants” such as Google and Apple exploit data prompted him to study hard for higher positions. Currently, he is working for FSOFT as a Data Scientist focusing on Big Data. Before that, he was the leading data scientist of Rakuten – the company that owns the No. 6 E-commerce platform in the world.
According to Mr. Khuong, people working in the field of data need to pay special attention to data management and security. In big countries like the US, Japan…, data is very clearly regulated regarding the purpose of use and is strictly confidential. Sometimes, business needs need access to different data sources. But to access them, it is necessary to obtain access permission from the data governance team.
The former Rakuten expert also pointed out the importance of data when comparing the performance of the model significantly increasing from 10-20%, sometimes up to 40% if there are enough data sources. In recent years the development of research branches of AI and Machine Learning has been very useful, allowing it to build a complete model with limited data. Particularly at FSOFT, a problem to be solved is a rather limited data source depending on the customer. As a result, the company had a team that built the model according to limited requirements on labeled data.
Unlike Mr. Khuong, Ms. Ha Dinh started out as a genuine marketer. Thanks to her experience, she realized that qualitative analysis was not enough to explain user insight, so she decided to pursue a Master’s degree in Data Science at the University of British Columbia. Ms. Ha Dinh wishes to be able to use survey and quantitative analysis to study human behavior. Thereby helping businesses make decisions and strategies.
With her role at Shopify, Ms. Ha Dinh has conducted surveys and researches on personnel, such as employee satisfaction, salary fairness, criteria for a model boss, etc. The company can consider and issue HR policies to improve as well as meet the aspirations of employees.
At work, Ha Dinh often uses Data Visualization. Roughly speaking, this is a way for a data maker to “translate” his or her data work into a form that is easy to understand, but still rich in informational value for the viewers. However, she noted that “The easy part is technical, the hard part is how to present and convince businesses to believe in the value of their data, analytical arguments and suggestions.”
In addition, Ha Dinh has to do more surveys and interviews to understand how leaders understand the data and act on it. This is a continuous research process going from data to dashboard data visualization, and continuously evolving the dashboard.
Concluding the livestream, Dr. Nguyen Duy Khuong said: “It’s not about what skills you have, but whether you’re ready to learn something new, dare to commit, and continuously improve yourself. Because that will lead you to success and opportunities are plentiful in today’s flat world.”
An Chi
