A Seminar on “Data Science for Decision Making in Organisations”

A seminar on “Data Science for Decision Making in Organisations” was jointly organized by the Career Guidance and Skills Development Committee of the OPA and the Institute of Applied Statistics of Sri Lanka (IASSL). The event, which took place on the 20th of February, 2024 at the OPA auditorium, featured Prof. Kapila Rathnayake, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, as guest speaker. Dr. Priyath de Silva,Treasurer, IASSL, also participated as a panelist while the moderator was Dr. Niroshan Withanage,President, IASSL.

In his presentation, Prof. Rathnayake described data science as the process of discovering patterns in large data set using methods that combine machine learning, statistics and mathematics. As such, it has valuable applications in business, including prediction and description, customer relationship marketing, customer profiling and customer segmentation. He also described data mining and data modeling techniques, while also citing real-world examples.The participants were able to expand their knowledge in the Q & A session that followed.