(Translated from Japanese)
In a project dealing with data in my previous job I discovered the joy of finding out new things from data.
My college major was in the arts and my mathematics skills fell apart early in high school (laughs) so I disliked figures and data. During the project, I did not want to struggle with data every day. However, there were moments when looking at the data that I thought that "there is a trend here", or "I did not know this" in such a situation, so I was a little interested. However as the project was really tiresome, I was determined to have nothing to do with data right after I finished.
After a while I began thinking about data and analysis again. Although it was tiresome, it was also a little enjoyable. I began teaching myself statistics from that point. I became more and more interested and it took me a while to start thinking about doing further. Eventually I thought that to study properly and become a real graduate meant attending graduate school so I resolved to do a graduate course.
I had a great encounter with Professor Yada who is the current teaching professor. I was planning to return to the business world after completing my graduate studies so I was thinking about the two conditions when choosing a graduate school:
- To be able to do practical research
- To acquire the skills of data analysis, programming, and planning development in a manner that is business-friendly.
When I read about Professor Yada’s program on the Kansai University website I saw that practical research was being done so I set up a meeting. Afterwards when I heard Professor Yada talk about the program and background, I thought "this was the right guy!" Professor Yada had collaborated with companies to conduct data analysis and research, and it was research directly related to business. Also, not only does he have abundant expertise, but his personality and frank manner of speaking is very logical and easy to understand. I decided that this was the place to do my research.
Currently we are analyzing data provided by companies (retailers)*. The data I deal with is roughly divided into three categories. The first is ID-POS data concerning what the customer bought at the store. The second is RFID data about where the customer moved in the store. The third category is eye tracking data which is about what the customer saw. By combining and analyzing data from these three categories, we are studying customer characteristics and creating new sales areas that we have not seen so far.
We may also receive analysis topics from the companies we work with. In these cases we will have multiple meetings with company representatives to improve the accuracy of our analysis whilst also potentially altering the direction of our analysis. Ultimately, there will be an opportunity to present our analysis results to company executives and field staff. It is important not only to analyze the data but also to address opinions from each staff member in the analysis, and also present the results to decision makers in an easy-to-understand manner. Overall you learn a lot in the process when you are provided with topic from a company.
* Individuals are anonymous in the data we have been provided and cannot be identified.
It is the most interesting to see the unknown possibilities when analyzing data. It is interesting to be able to explain from the data what you could not previously explain or see.
There are various processes such as: cleaning (processing) the data to be handled, choosing the appropriate analysis method, interpreting the analysis results, and putting these results into a practical useful proposal. Sometimes things do not progress as I want and sometimes it makes me very cheerful. Sometimes in the struggle to come up with a new idea or approach, I become obsessed (laughs). I think about it not only when traveling or eating, but also when taking a bath or in the toilet. I think about it before going to bed, and when it gets really bad, I will even dream about data displayed on PC screens (laughs). But when I finally figure it out, it’s like a light bulb going off in my head, I get a sense of tremendous satisfaction.
I would like to work with various kinds of data. With advances in technology, we have been able to acquire data that was previously inaccessible. For me, data is like a treasure box full of unknown possibilities. So if you work with data you’ve never seen before, you will be excited. I would like to analyze various types of data and find new knowledge within. And I would be happy if I could present my findings back to companies and practitioners, and publicize my research results for the world.