I believe every good story starts with data! During my professional career, I worked and still work with data in all sorts of capacities. My first real adventure with data began when I started my university degree in biomedical science. Whilst working on many projects focused on researching the fascinating biology and intricacies of the human body, I began to truly appreciate the story the data can tell us about ourselves. I then followed down this route to become a research assistant, where I worked on exploring how brain tumours initiate and propagate. Here I worked closely with data as I analysed results of my experiments. This was an interesting experience, which felt very much like putting together little data puzzle pieces in an endless pursuit to see the big picture. The next data adventure took me in a different direction. Following my passion for data, I decided to acquire a profession, where data is an absolute central point of my work. I became a data officer at The Devon and Cornwall Police. There I had an opportunity to work with a completely different kind of data both in type and content. I became familiar with large nationwide databases and different data types such as geospatial data. This is also where my eyes were pried wide open! I realised the full extent of the world of big data and the possibilities that lie within! This spurred me on to become more involved with big data work, automation and machine learning by becoming a junior data scientist at The Pensions Regulator. This is where I am currently and I absolutely love my work. Everyday I am learning something new, be it coding, data analysis and more! I currently provide data science services to The Pensions Regulator as a part of a team of fantastic people.

What is data?

Before we get too ahead of ourselves, what on earth is data? Well, data is essentially information. It is information that can be analysed and used as a basis for decision making. What is truly fascinating here is just how many forms the data can take. Images, statistics, charts, graphs, maps, numbers, and words are all considered to be data. Thus it is not difficult to see the power of insights data can provide us with. Especially if you take the huge amount of data available to us in current times and combine it with the sheer processing power of computers! On top of this you have these machines literally developing their own intelligence! This is why I believe the data is central to providing us with a story of insights from which we can learn and make better informed decisions in the future.

About the blog

If you are a data fan, stay and check out some stories here. If you like to tinker with data yourself, see some of my guides in the technical guides page. While you are at it, why not connect with me below! I am always on a lookout for new data-related ideas to explore. If you have any ideas you would like me to cover in the blog, jump over to the contact page and drop me a message!