On Data Science

At request of colleagues, what I have to say on this is: I believe that data science doesn’t have the word “science” to make it look sexy. It really means it. Data Science as a discipline is not new. It has been living among us for 50 years. It was invented by scientists with deeply ingrained love for statistics.

Statisticians have been the inventors and guardians of data science. They still are. And still contributing to understand this data-based world. DS wasn’t called like that until very recently; it was known as data analysis. There has been a lot of things going on that has contributed to the conflicting take of statisticians, primarily due to computer science, great computer power, and ever growing inundation of data at all levels of our society.

The point I am trying to make is that Data Science is in essence the scientific method applied to analyze the data. I will say it again: the word science in data science is not gratuitous; it is deserving providing you, as a data scientist, use scientific methods to extract meaning from data.

So, what are those scientific methods?

References: https://courses.csail.mit.edu/18.337/2015/docs/50YearsDataScience.pdf