What Is Data Science - Quora
What Is Data Science - Quora
- Quora
3 21
Home Answer Spaces Notifications Search Quora Add Question or Link
For smart people only, test yourself to see if you are able to manage your own What is a data scientist's career path?
money.
What is the data science topic FAQ?
Start now at iforex.com
Is data science overrated?
Data science is the field of study that combines domain expertise, programming
skills, and knowledge of math and statistics to extract meaningful insights from data.
Data science practitioners apply machine learning algorithms to numbers, text,
images, video, audio, and more to produce artificial intelligence (AI) systems that
perform tasks which ordinarily require human intelligence. In turn, these systems
generate insights that analysts and business users translate into tangible business
value.
4. What are good ways to get started with data science for a complete novice?
100+ Answers
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 1/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
Illinois Institute of Technology 3 21
Home Answer Spaces Notifications Search Quora Add Question or Link
I have been a data scientist for about two years. Here are some quick thoughts
on what I think data science is. Or, why don't we start with what data science is
not.
First, data science is not a software engineering piece of work. That is, data
science is not about building products or product features or systems or any
related fancy things.
Second, data science is not a visualization piece of work. Creating the cool visual
is neither the end goal nor the beginning part of how a data scientist works.
Needless to say, data science is not about creating visually impactful
infographics.
Third, data science is not a scientific piece of work. In particular, data scientists
don't work in the academia. It is the industry's particular requirements and the
business markets' call that makes the job of data scientist needed. Data
scientists usually don't publish papers, and neither is the paper or book
publishing business part of any data scientists' daily concerns.
Last but not least, I don't agree with the public view that data science is, at least
mostly, statistics. Just to cite a quick story of myself. Once I was asked to hire
someone to assist my work and ended up interviewing lots of applicants through
phone. Many of the applicants came from the filed of statistical analysis and
most of these applicants tended to sound really confident that he or she would
be more than qualified for the role. However, I didn't end up calling any of them
on-site. One thing I realized at that time was that statistical knowledge alone
doesn't make a person qualified for assisting me effectively on the kind of data
science work that I needed to do, for reasons I'll mention in a short while.
Now, we are ready to talk about what data science is. It's a thing that
encapsulates some programming skills, some statistical readiness, some
visualization techniques, and, last but not least, a lot of business senses. The
kind of business sense that I in particular care about is the ability and
willingness, sometimes eagerness, to translate any business questions into
questions answerable using currently or forthcomingly available data within
one's reach. In fact, it takes a special way of connecting all the dots in the
random world full of data most of which you may not find immediately useful to
make a working data scientist.
I'm going to share a favorite analogue of mine about data science. Doing data
science is like preparing a meal. One starts with data munging, which includes
but is not restricted to ETL (extract, transform, and load), data cleansing, data
debugging, etc. This is the step similar to preparing the food source, where you
rinse cleans the vegetables, the meat, and the rice, chop the food source into
reasonably sized pieces, and put them aside. After that is done, you are ready to
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 2/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
Summarizing the above, the process of data science consists of data munging,
data mining, and delivering actionable insights. Based on my own experience, a
common toolset to get all or part of these done include Python, R, Tableau, SQL,
etc.
Besides Python, R, Tableau, there's one more data science tool that I want to
mention before finishing this post. SQL is the language of English in the world of
data munging, or at least have been so for a very long time. It is powerful in
integrating different data sources, and handy for data exploration and data
debugging.
These are just my two cents on what data science is. I hope it make sense to you
so far. I'm still a learner, and merely a beginner in this field, and I expect to pick
up a lot more and deeper understanding on this subject matter in the near
future.
74.6k views · View Upvoters · View Sharers
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 3/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
Ralph Winters 3 21
Home
It sounds like you are aAnswer Spaces
bit biased against Notifications
statisticians based upon some sort ofSearch
preco…Quora Add Question or Link
Sponsored by Finq.com
Don't miss the opportunity to earn.
Up to $4,000 bonus on first deposit.
(As of 22 July, 2016) I’ve just left an interview where they asked me the same
question. After reading the other 41 answers, I’ll try to address a simpler and
correct one.
Our endeavor on this post will be to define and understand Data Science, so let’s
get some perspective. I have a background in mechatronics and mechanical
engineering. Mechatronics is basically an attempt to understand every
engineering piece, from electronics to robotics, from mechanical to computing
and so on. You can imagine that I’m familiar to the struggles of Data Science.
However, with Mechatronics I have a more intimate and older story. Everything
started with my technical course on 2007. I thought that it was the universal
panacea too. I’ll leave up to you to guess if I was right or not.
From this graph you can see in a glimpse that Data Science (red line) was not
that famous on 2007, but surprisingly: “It was there! Wow!”. Yeah, I know.
First conclusion, Data Science on it’s own it’s older than what they are
trying to make you believe.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 4/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
Second conclusion, Data Science was always there but without all the
buzz, officially coined term and rebranding. (I say always because we’re
not talking about cavemen here, ok?)
After these two main conclusions. Let’s get something more dynamic. A picture
is worth a thousand words (think in Data Visualizations).
What about a video? Take one minute of your life and watch the video
below (I promise that will worth it).
Yann LeCun was recognizing hand written digits in 1993 (I was 2 years old by
then lol). This was not only about Machine Learning , it was required to have a
specific database (MNIST ) to train the model (not going to be technical here,
more at: LeCun’s Demos ).
Nowadays, if you need to create MNIST again from the NIST Special Database
and a model to recognize digits, prototype the whole process into a product and
present to C-suite executives, you would be probably considering to hire a Data
Scientist.
Data Scientists work with data. That’s why we have Data Science. Simple
enough.
2. The question is about Data science. So I will not talk about Data
Scientists. Go to What is a data scientist? if you are interested in that
answer;
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 5/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
3 21
3. The biggest error that IAnswer
Home found in most of the answers
Spaces was some sortSearch
Notifications of: Quora Add Question or Link
a. “Data Science is when you are dealing with Big Data, large ammounts
of data”.
b. That is not true, Data Science can be applied to a data set with one
thousand lines, there is no problem with this.
4. Another misconception:
b. That’s why I agree with the article Data Is Not The New Oil
7. It was clearly being used in a lot of fields for the past years:
a. Statistics/Mathematics
b. Data mining
d. Strategy Consulting
e. Many others…
f. The craziest part is that you see professionals of these areas updating
their resumes with something like “I worked with Data Science back
then in 199X”
8. The creation of Data Science in simple words: two sides that were not
totally connected, but with the new fast paced and technological world
would have to merge together.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 6/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
3 21
b. Computer
Homescience:Answer
make the bridge between the
Spaces models and the
Notifications Search Quora Add Question or Link
data in a feasible time to come with the result;
c. Only two sides because Machine Learning is all based on math and
stats;
a. Linear algebra
c. Analytical geometry
d. Optimization
e. Calculus
iv. H2O
v. Big ML
10. The Drew Conway’s Data Science Venn Diagram . The Substantive
expertise (or Domain expertise) is the specific knowledge of the area
that you are applying Data Science. To know more about the lack of
substantive expertise in data science: What's Missing in Data Science
Talks - As Risky As It Gets
11. [2018, Update] I used to believe in the Danger Zone, but I don’t think
that it makes sense now. Think in a business analyst that create all the
SQL queries to get simple KPIs and update a company-wide dashboard.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 7/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
WHAT IS NOT
2. It’s not the salvation of companies that never measured anything and
now want to get insights from their data. “Garbage in, garbage out” Data
science will be as good as the data generated on the following years
after the initial Data Science efforts. This can be mitigated by a legacy
data migration;
3. Just present data using some Excel charts without any insight about the
data. This would be descriptive analytics;
Finishing my answer with all types of analytics that together get closer to
encompass the Data Science definition:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 8/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
3 21
Home Answer Spaces Notifications Search Quora Add Question or Link
[Update: 2018–02–17] I’ll be going through these +101 answers (which 18 are
collapsed) to update my answer someday. There are some really good answers
on this question, but I personally don’t recommend to take advises from people
that aren’t researchers, professors or professionals. This people are also known
as aficionados, enthusiasts, 190+ IQ etc.
[Curiosity] If you analyse the most famous diagram that defines mechatronics,
you are probably going to see some similarities. Humans when faced with
complex problems, tend to be predictable (e.g. create diagrams to explain to
others).
Ref.: Wikipedia
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 9/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
Always upvote answers that you find useful. Everyone can be wrong so be
respectful and polite.
80.2k views · View Upvoters · View Sharers
Most people are confused about the distinction between the terms:
statistician
software engineer
data engineer
data scientist
Each of these overlap each other quite a bit, but rest assured that they each have
a reason to exist.
A data scientist can do most of the tasks encompassed by any one of the above
jobs. However they are not distinguished from their peers by what they can d...
(more)
Upvote · 31 Share
Sponsored by Buddy
Getting frustrated with your CI/CD tool?
Run builds & commands safe and sound in the isolation of containers.
Data Scientists are people with some mix of coding and statistical skills who
work on making data useful in various ways. In my world, there are two main
types:
Type A Data Scientist: The A is for Analysis. This type is primarily concerned
with making sense of data or working with it in a fairly static way.The Type A
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 10/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
“Data” – the “digital gold” is the all pervading commodity in today’s electronic
world. We have data streaming in from different sources for organizations with
different needs. For example, there is data pertaining to weather, stock prices,
home prices, disease outbreaks and so on. For example, look at the data set
below:
It is very hard to understand the numbers above and draw any conclusions from
it. Which department and which store is doing well? Which is the best quarter
for sales in store 101? It is extremely difficult to draw inferences or any insights
into this raw data with our naked eyes. This is where “data science” steps in.
What we do with this data and what conclusions will we draw to improve our
business goals forms the basis of “Data science”. As such, data scientists are
made up of a blend of skills relating to mathematics, statistics,
programming and some business logic. The marvellous fusion of these skills
in a professional leads them to give amazing conclusions based on which
businesses can grow and improve their profits.
From the days to “Enterprise Data warehouses (EDW)” to “Data science” we have
come a long way. Diving deep into data into its lowest granularity, every
organization likes to understand user habits and tweak their news feeds and
develop new products appropriately.
This is possible only by master “Data scientists” who improve the productivity
and ROI of the organization. Wanna know more about data science? Attend a
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 11/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
Upvote · 7 Share
First, the term "data science" is a misnomer with respect to what most people
consider endeavors classified as such. Fundamentally, "science" is about
formalizing a hypothesis given a reasonable set of observations and
assumptions, designing an experiment around that hypothesis, testings it and
analyzing the data generated through that process to either confirm or falsify
the hypothesis. Therefore, "data" is simply a natural byproduct of science. Very
(very) rarely are things labeled as data science actually scientific.
Rather, data science most often refers to the tools and methods use... (more)
Data science is a term used to refer to all the procedures and methodologies that
are used to procure, organize, package, and present data in an easily
understandable format. There are different kinds of data that might be available
in different fields, and this data could be either in a structured or unstructured
format.
This term refers to assimilating all available data into an easily available format
that can be utilized in various spheres of human activity. With the emergence of
the concept of Big Data in today’s IT-enhanced world, the need for data science
is on the rise. By extrapolat... (more)
Upvote · 6 Share
It is a bit like digging in Excel, on some level, but yes much bigger and also more
rigorous. Excel is limited to a few million rows, and even then it’s very slow.
Overall Excel offers a tiny subset of the things you can do to manipulate and
analyze data.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 12/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
Upvote · 6 Share
What is it not?
A Data Scientist is not someone who studies data and interpret various
results out of it. This can be done by Data Analyst.
(more)
Upvote · 16 Share
Hi,
Data science is a field of Big Data geared toward providing meaningful
information based on large amounts of complex data. Data science, or data-
driven science, combine different fields of work in statistics and computation in
order to interpret data for the purpose of decision making.
Data is drawn from different sectors and platforms including cell phones, social
media, e-commerce sites, healthcare surveys, internet searches, etc. The
increase in the amount of data available opened the door to a new field of study
called Big Data — or the extremely large data sets that can help produ... (more)
Upvote · 18 Share · 1
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 13/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
Answered Sep 10, 2018 3 21
Home Answer Spaces Notifications Search Quora Add Question or Link
4. ...
(more)
Upvote · 11 Share
Data scientist performs research and analysis on data and helps companies to
improve business by predicting growth, trends and business insights based on
huge amounts of data.
Armed with data and analytical results, a top-tier data scientist will then
communicate informed conclusions and recommendations across an
organizations leadership structure.
Successful big data scientists will be in high demand and will be able to earn
very nice salaries. But in order to be successful, big data scientists need to have a
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 14/15
6/6/2019 (21) What is data science? - Quora
wide range of skills that until now3 did not even fit into one department.
21
Home Answer Spaces Notifications Search Quora Add Question or Link
Le... (more)
Upvote · 88 Share
https://www.quora.com/What-is-data-science 15/15