What is data science?

Data science is important

… academic institutions should encourage the development of a basic understanding of data science in all undergraduates – A 2018 report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Data science is very important

… the really important intellectual event of the next fifty years” – Donoho (2015) “50 years of data science”.

The data scientist

A very brief history of data analysis

• Ronald Fisher and statistics
• John Tukey and data analysis

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise. J. W. Tukey (1962) “The future of data analysis”.

What is data science?

• A new culture of data analysis.
• Code as foundation;
• Analysis becomes:
  • versatile (big, messy, mixed, complex);
  • realistic about the work of analysis (cleaning, exploring …);
  • collaborative;
  • reproducible;
• Emphasis on algorithms over mathematics for analysis and explanation.

What’s in data science?

• Code!
• Exploring data
• Looking at data with graphs and pictures
• Making and testing models (statistics, machine learning)
• Predicting new data