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Data Science Applications

This document provides an introduction and overview of the DATA 5000: Introduction to Data Science course. It outlines the course topics, evaluation criteria, contact information for the instructors, and a tentative course schedule. The course will cover data science skills and tools like R, IBM Cognos Workspace, IBM SPSS Modeler, and Watson Analytics. Students will complete a group project on a data science topic of their choosing. The project will involve a proposal, presentation outline, final presentation, and paper. Recommended books and some example project ideas are also listed.

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72 views25 pages

Data Science Applications

This document provides an introduction and overview of the DATA 5000: Introduction to Data Science course. It outlines the course topics, evaluation criteria, contact information for the instructors, and a tentative course schedule. The course will cover data science skills and tools like R, IBM Cognos Workspace, IBM SPSS Modeler, and Watson Analytics. Students will complete a group project on a data science topic of their choosing. The project will involve a proposal, presentation outline, final presentation, and paper. Recommended books and some example project ideas are also listed.

Uploaded by

Vitor
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction to Data Science

January 11, 2016


About this course

DATA 5000: Introduction to Data Science

Some highlights:
• Topics for data scientists
• R
• IBM Cognos Workspace, IBM SPSS Modeler, Watson
Analytics
• VCL cloud
• Course projects
Evaluation

Course Project

• 10% Project proposal, due 25 January, 2016


• 10% Presentation outline, due 17 March, 2016
• 30% Presentation, last two classes 28 March and 4 April, 2016
• 50% Project paper, due April 11, 2016

Details will be discussed later today.


Contact information

Olga Baysal
Email: [email protected]
Office hours: By appointment or via Slack
Office: HP 5125D
Website: http://olgabaysal.com/teaching/winter16/
data5000.html

Boyan Bejanov
Email: [email protected]
Office hours: By appointment or via Slack
Office: none
Website: http://scs.carleton.ca/~boyanbejanov/data5000
What is Data Science?
Business efficiency: Wal-Mart

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/business/yourmoney/14wal.html
Business marketing: Target

http://tinyurl.com/7jbntx3
Recommendations: Netflix

• In October 2006 Netflix held a competition for the best


algorithm to predict user ratings of movies.
• The winner must improve Netflix’ own algorithm by at least
10%
• Award was given in September 2009.

http://www2.research.att.com/~volinsky/netflix/bpc.html
Sports analytics
Many others

• Cities: http://data.cityofchicago.org/
• Physics: http://particlefever.com/
• Politics: http://53eig.ht/1zPmuCD
• Social networks
• Biology
• Medicine
• etc.
Cholera outbreak in London 1856

• Physician John
Snow links the
outbreak to a
contaminated
well by plotting
number of
cases on a map
• Started the
science of
epidemiology
The Winchester Roll of 1086

a.k.a. Domesday Book

• Commissioned in 1085 by
William the Conqueror
• Record of the Great
Survey of England
• Last used to settle dispute
in court in the 1960s!

http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/
Data in the 20-th century

What problems were solved?


• Engineering: design of machines
• Sciences: formulation of theories

How were problems solved?


• Empirically
• Theories
• Computation
Data in the 21-st century

How is today different?


• More data is available
• More data is digital
• More data is observed, rather than generated by a
designed experiment
Data in the 21-st century

What problems are solved today?


• Spell checking
• Face recognition
• Sentiment analysis
• Optimal routing
• High-frequency trading algorithms
• just to name a few . . .
Data in the 21-st century

How are problems solved today?


• Empirically
• Theories
• Computation
• Data exploration

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/
For example
Network security:
• 20-th century: based on rules and signatures
• 21-st century: data mining traffic logs, cf.
http://www.bro.org/

Artificial Intelligence:

VS.
A good question

So, what is data science?


Who are the data scientists?
https://hbr.org/2012/10/data-scientist-the-sexiest-job-of-the-21st-century/

Skills:
• make discoveries while swimming in data
• don’t allow technical limitations to bog down solutions
• often fashion their own tools
• skilled in storytelling with data
Some data-driven companies:
• Google, Wal-Mart, Twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon
What data scientists do

• Ask a question
• Get relevant data
• Prepare data for analysis
- outliers, missing values, incorrect values
• Explore data
- understand the world as it is (was)
• Statistical model
- estimate/train and validate model
- predict what will (likely) happen
• Communicate results
- tell a story
- recommend
Data scientist skills

• Computer science
- programming, hacking skills
• Statistics
- probability, distributions, modelling
• Mathematics
- linear algebra, calculus, optimization
• Domain expertise
- storytelling, pose question, interpret result
• Communication
- presentation, data visualization
Drew Conway’s Venn diagram

http://drewconway.com/zia/2013/3/26/the-data-science-venn-diagram
Tentative course schedule

11 Jan First class.


25 Jan Project proposals due by end of day.
1 Feb Cognos Workspace, TBC.
15 Feb Reading week, no class
22 Feb SPSS Modeler, TBC.
7 Mar Watson Analytics, TBC.
Presentation outlines due by March 17.
14, 21 Mar Guest lectures.
28 Mar Project presentations.
4 Apr Project presentations, last class.
11 Apr Project papers due.
Books
Note: These books are not required.

Books used for this course:


• Doing Data Science
by Cathy O’Neil and Rachel Schutt
• Data Mining And Business Analytics With R
by Johannes Ledolter
• Data Science for Business
by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett

Other good books:


• An Introduction to Statistical Learning
by T. Hastie, R. Tibshirani et al.
• The Elements of Statistical Learning
by T. Hastie, R. Tibshirani et al.
Projects

Teams of 2 - no individual projects, no larger groups. No teams with


all members from the same department!
Email me your team name (optional), and team members by January
17, 2016 (before next class).
Project proposals are due January 25, 2016. Proposal should
describe your question, the dataset and an idea of what you’ll do with
it. Keep it short.
Some project ideas and datasets are listed on the course website:
http://olgabaysal.com/teaching/winter16/data5000.
html#datasets.

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