Nnabundom Raji explains why he chose to study in Ireland: a love of data and the fact that Dublin is a world leader when it comes to big data.
I wish I could tell a tall tale of the stars aligning and that I had a magical moment at the end of the rainbow that would drive me to choose Ireland. I’m sorry! Nothing of the sort happened. I am a graduate from the Department of Mathematics, and I have worked in the service industry for a while. I am currently doing a master’s degree programme in Data Analytics at Dublin Business School. I must give you a profile to justify the rationale behind this venture.
‘Data takeover’
Choosing Ireland to study stemmed from my choice of course: Data Analytics. This was chosen due to two reasons: my background and the ‘data takeover’ which is a big deal in every industry. Regarding my background, it is obvious, I guess. I am into analysis and I love dabbling in exploratory analysis too.
The second reason is due to the awareness of the trend in every industry from finance to manufacturing and agriculture and beyond.
Every industry has recognised the need for data and the intelligence it provides. Let us throw in a few statistics: “According to a new report from IBM Marketing Cloud, ‘10 Key Marketing Trends For 2017,’ 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone, at 2.5 quintillion bytes of data a day!” This implies “data handlers” of these resources will be in great demand.
To all my data analysis colleagues, I am sorry for downplaying our standing as “data handlers” … just making a point. The figure is huge, right?
The Age of Data
“According to a survey conducted by IBM, there will be an increase by 364,000 to 2,720,000 openings in the year 2020. Furthermore, the unstoppable rise in demand for data scientists will reach approximately 700,000 openings in the same year.” I don’t know about you but yes!!! This is the Age of Data.
Silicon Docks
Realizing I have only fire in my arsenal (considering I was kind of a caveman prior to pursuing my master’s degree), I knew I needed to upskill along this path. And what better place than to do it in than the country with the Silicon Docks. A country with Fortune 500 companies is a good reason of its own, but it has also been found that the Republic of Ireland is renowned for adopting digital technologies. The integration is here.
Furthermore, a 2016 report produced by William Fry in association with Forbes Insights recently found “that 96% of leading companies around the world see Ireland as a favorable investment location when it comes to Big Data investments.” So I applied to do an M.Sc. in Data Analytics with a curriculum tailored to the anticipated expectation of the new data age.
I know I have been referring a lot to numbers – I am not much of a fairy tale teller – but at the end of day, due to Ireland’s readiness to embrace the Age of Data, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. With the pot of gold being personal development, career advancement and readiness for the future in data.