Ahead of the Curve: Data Miner

Data Miner. There's always a new magic pill that's supposed to make businesses more successful. Some examples from the past decade: the Six Sigma approach to quality improvement, diversity training, and data mining. Those fads appear to be fading—except for data mining, the use of statistics to predict or explain customer behavior. Examples: Did a new drug really work better than the current gold-standard drug? What products should be pitched to each of your previous online customers? Which times of the year and for which markets should production be increased? How likely is it that credit card spending is fraudulent?

Data mining is a great career for people who would enjoy using statistics to unearth patterns in data, using ever more powerful software. Opportunities are particularly good if you also have business sense and the ability to tease out the information that bosses really want to know.

Learn more: UCLA overview of data mining, Wikipedia profile on data mining, and career advancement in data mining.