Graduate / 'To analyze better, I must know better' - Statement of Purpose for Data Science program [3]

sop for Data Science program at columbia university

As Walt Disney once said, we keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. Growing up in a small city in Odisha state of India, as state level fast bowler, I always wondered if I could predict the chances of a batsman making an instinctive mistake. As kid, sitting on passenger seat alongside my father I would imagine the world where cars could drive on their own. This spark of curiosity made me analyze things and I realized at an early age that to analyze better, I must know better.

After graduating as Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering in 2010, I got placed with Accenture Services as an Associate Engineer, kick starting my professional journey. I worked with major clients for Accenture across the Europe, South America and South Africa. I earned back to back progressions to Senior analyst and honed my technical skills at an equal degree. After five and half years I parted ways with Accenture to join a UK based Consulting firm at AgilityWorks, as a consultant. It has been a revelation working with Consulting firms as we help companies on their Digital Transformation. I have been majorly associated with SAP tools with its Large-scale Data Warehousing (DWH) Technology called the SAP BWonHANA. I worked on SAP HANA to support transactional and analytical processing with broad set advanced analytics. I have designed Data Warehouse in SAP BW for SABMiller, at one time was the second largest Brewing and Bottling Company. Developed data warehouse for Coats, the world's largest Industrial thread manufacturer. My work requires me to constantly create dashboards and reports using Power BI, Tableau and host of tools for my clients. I worked with companies on analyzing their business processes, optimizing their KPIs and designing an analytics architecture in line with their organizational goals and aspirations. As an individual contributor, I found out that Analytics is one-of-a-kind Techno-Functional discipline and management skills are an absolute must for any Analytics Consultant to deliver.

Over the past few years my stint as a Senior Consultant in the field of Analytics, I have realized that the Analytics is a discipline that is as expansive as the field of Computer Science itself. I believe that data science and analytics is one of the few disciplines that encompasses knowledge from other disciplines that requires both technical and leadership skillset. In the past 9 years, I have worked across the areas of Finance, Supply chain Management, Logistics and CRM. However, with my current ongoing project, I am working in highly specialized field of Trade Promotion Management wherein, I felt the need for enhancing my Data Mining skillsets for value addition tasks like better demand planning, baseline Forecasts and promotion optimization. With certified skill set on Python and R, I have been assisting SAP and Agility Works with building Proof of Concepts for Predictive analytics and Internet of Things (IoT). I realized that I will need to devote extra efforts and dedicate myself completely to bridge the gap between my experience in data engineering to data science. Therefore, my application to Columbia University is primarily for one reason, to be a Champion in the field on Analytics. I have the necessary technical skills, experience and know-how but I aim to learn more. I want to delve deeper into the field of data mining , machine Learning and further enhance management skills that I have garnered in all years working with people from different cultures and practices.