Data Science

Data Science

What is Data Science?

Simply, data science extracts meaningful insights from data. It does so through the combination of statistics and maths, programming, analytics and visualisation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The insights the displine produces benefit in businesses, governments, and educational organisations.

Data science is one of the fastest growing industries. There are various reasons behind the rapid acceleration, but some of the main factors are: awareness, data, and power.

  • Awareness refers to the fact that many individuals as well as businesses worldwide have now realised the potential and benefits of data science. The advantages of the field can help businesses grow, governments expand economically, healthcare organisations find cures, and support the development of efficient and ecological societies.
  • The availability of data has never been to the extent we have today – data is collected through various ways (phones, tracking devices, sensors, transactions, social media, and many many more). Data is also freely available via many sources such as governments, companies, agencies, and other organisations.
  • Power, and more particularly computational power, has advanced very rapidly in the last few decades. What very expensive and large computers could perform in the past can now be achieved with a very small fraction today. Computers have become cheaper and more powerful, allowing more individuals and businesses to perform data studies.

Data Scientist

Data scientists are the practitioners of data science. There are various skills a data scientist must have (depending on the problem, business, and sector) – the following diagram shows the skills surrounding DS.

data science knowledge diagram
DS knowledge diagram

Next: What is Data

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