A-Levels Student Hammad Nadeem Uses Data Sciences To Analyse COVID-19 In Pakistan

What sparked your interest in data analysis and can you tell our readers what the Data Sciences are all about?

From an early age, I had been interested in technology, although  I didn't exactly know what words like artificial intelligence, machine learning and Data Science really meant, they sounded really cool to me. Eventually, as I grew up I looked for ways to personally get involved with data science and machine learning. Last year I did a course on how a data science team functions by Johns Hopkins  University, this further intrigued me to look for more courses that could teach me to do data analysis myself. I then went on to learn how data analysis really works and how to use Python, which is a programming language, I was really stunned to see how we could use already existing data to form relations between different variables to analyze how they correlate with each other.

You mentioned that you are a student of A’ Levels, what are you studying in school?

I am currently studying Physics, Chemistry, Economics and Maths for my A levels.

Tell us a little bit about the data analysis that you have done relating to COVID-19 in Pakistan and what have you discovered?

The Data Analysis in this case provides us with unexpected results. It is generally expected that if a country is more developed, it must have a better health system, a higher educated population and hence a higher awareness of diseases, their symptoms as well as the precautions. This increases the country’s ability to cope up with the
disease. In this pandemic however it seems as if the tables have turned, the data analysis shows us that there is a positive correlation between the maximum infection rate and the factors which determine the level of development in a country, this basically means that countries which are more developed unexpectedly have a higher infection rate for Covid-19.

What other applications of data sciences can you think of that can help us in our lives?

Although we don't recognize this, Data Science is part of our everyday life. The shows that are recommended to us on Netflix are done using Data Science, whenever we use Google to search something we get links to the most relevant sites because of Data Science, it is the reason why when we search for a picture of an apple we don't get links to a website for cars. In the near future, I feel that we could use Data Science to help us buy or choose which clothes to wear, which books to read and more importantly what to cook using data about ourselves. We could even use it to train for a sport and instead of trying to work out what we are doing wrong for days, we could use data science to tell us exactly what we must change to increase our chances of winning in a matter of few hours.

Do you intend to keep your focus on data analysis when you continue your higher education?

Absolutely, Data Science is a subject on which  I have spent sufficient time to become fully aware of what it means to be a Data Scientist. If I get the chance to pursue Data Science in my higher education, I am quite sure I would take that chance.