Where Analytics, Data Science, Machine Learning Were Applied: Trends and Analysis

CRM/Consumer Analytics, Finance, and Banking are still the leading applications, but Health Care and Fraud Detection are gaining. Anti-spam, Manufacturing, and Social are the fastest growing sectors in 2017, while Oil / Gas / Energy and Social Networks analysis have declined.



Regional distribution was again similar to last year poll, but almost exactly the same share from US/Canada and Europe, with higher share from Asia and lower share from Africa/Middle East and Latin America:
  • US/Canada, 39%
  • Europe, 34%
  • Asia 16%
  • Latin America, 5.2%
  • Africa/Middle East, 3.1%
  • Australia/NZ, 2.9%
Industries/Fields where you applied Analytics, Data Science, Machine Learning in 2017? 2017 % of voters 2016 % of voters 2015 % of voters
CRM/Consumer analytics (75)
Finance (68)
Banking (63)
Health care (59)
Fraud Detection (58)
Science (55)
Retail (50)
Advertising (47)
E-commerce (46)
Education (42)
Manufacturing (40)
Medical/ Pharma (38)
Supply Chain (38)
Other (36)
Insurance (36)
IT / Network Infrastructure (34)
Credit Scoring (31)
Social Media / Social Networks (30)
Oil / Gas / Energy (29)
Government/ Military (26)
Telecom / Cable (26)
Automotive/Self-Driving Cars (24)
Search / Web content mining (24)
Biotech/Genomics (24)
Software (24)
Direct Marketing/ Fundraising (22)
HR/workforce analytics (21)
Travel / Hospitality (18)
Games (16)
Agriculture (15)
Investment / Stocks (15)
Mining (14)
Social Good/Non-profit (12)
Entertainment/ Music/ TV/ Movies (12)
Junk email / Anti-spam (10)
Social Policy/ Survey analysis (7)
Security / Anti-terrorism (7)
Mobile apps (6)


Here are the results of past polls: Comments on the poll page
Chris Barnes:
Many fields not included; e.g. : Mathematics, Sport, Education; Business Process Engineering; Economics, Gambling.... How were the categories chosen, given the inevitable overlaps? What about a clustered correlation plot etc? Gregory Piatetsky
The options are the most popular application areas based on our view of the field and our experience and are the same as in 2016 poll where "Other" option was only 6%. In this poll "Other" was 8%.