Steve Lohr of the New York Times reported last week in an article titled “New Ways to Exploit Raw Data May Bring Surge of Innovation, a Study Says” that a McKinsey Global Institute study predicts that businesses will need tens of thousands of data analysts and statisticians to mine big data in the near future. Lohr’s article begins, “Math majors, rejoice.”
The biggest problems? There is a looming shortage of qualified data scientists. In addition, managers need to become more data-literate as data-driven business decisions become more important. Third, privacy and security issues may limit the amount of available data. Finally, legacy data is often stored in formats that are not easily converted.
