Saturday, October 22, 2016

Data Science in Pakistan

Pakistan should invest in data science (Text Mining, Machine Learning, NLP, etc) in terms of sustainable research for years to come.

I will share three reasons which are as follows:
  1. No matter what industry we may want to evolve, develop, sustain, improve etc, we need to be ahead of other nations by maintaining our own uniqueness. For this to happen we need to analyse a lot of our own data over a period of time by our own experts (so that nothing crucial leaks to the outside world).
  2. Adopting solutions from research outcomes can shape education in a unique way, for example, what to study, combine in later degrees or cultivate experience to make the most out of qualification for the application. Analysing commonly asked questions by students through adopted systems can improve the gap between knowledge learned and knowledge applied. This task shall never be outsourced, we shall not be dependent over other nations in our critical ambitions.
  3. Analysing anomalies in any sector shall be aided by automated systems which should be developed inside Pakistan to ensure protection of our "sensitive data" which may define statistics about Pakistan and its population.
Proposition: we need government funded research facility for data science ambitions, where scientist/researchers should be hired aggressively with a sustainable budgets for decades. These advanced hires should be given open hand and piece of mind to publish in their works in top research venues. We need a mix of foreigners (bringing them to Pakistan is not an issue) and Pakistanis to kick start the process.