Introduction to Data Science

Study Notes

Data Science is the discipline that deals with the collection, processing, management, analysis, interpretation, and visualization of large, heterogeneous, and complex datasets.
The goals are extracting non-obvious and useful information, knowledge from big data, in order to improve scientific, social and business decision making.
Data Scientist's goal is to solve a scientific or business problem, not just analyze the data or build a predictive model.

Responsible for guiding the Data Science Project from start to end.
Requires quantifiable goals, good methodologies, cross-disciplinary interactions, and a repeatable workflow.

Data science deals with collecting, processing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing complex, large, and heterogeneous datasets.
Data science aims to extract useful, non-obvious information and knowledge from large volumes of data to improve decision-making in scientific, social, and business contexts.
Data science combines data analytical thinking and automation.

Human genome sequencing produces ~100 GB per genome, with ~1 million genomes expected to be sequenced.
Credit card transactions number in the billions per year.
Smartphone applications generate 300 hours of video every minute and host over 40 billion photos.
The amount of digital information increases tenfold every five years.

The data scientist is responsible for leading the data science project from start to finish.
Success requires quantifiable goals, good methodology, cross-discipline interaction, and repeatable workflow.
The project may include a data engineer, data analyst, data visualization specialist, statistician, and machine learning specialist.