It is the process of using data

to understand different things,

to understand the world.

- For me, it's when you have a model,

or a hypothesis of a problem,

and you try to validate that hypothesis or model

with your data.

- Data science is the art of uncovering

the insights and trends that are hiding behind data.

- It's when you translate data into a story,

so you use the storytelling to generate insights.

And with these insights,

you can make strategic...

choices for a company or institution.

- Data science is a field about processes and systems,

to extract data from various forms,

whether it is an unstructured or structured form.

- Data science is the study of data,

like biological sciences are the study of biology;

physical sciences, it's the study of physical reactions.

Data is real, data has real properties,

and we need to study them,

if we're gonna work on them.

- Data science involves data and some science.

The definition, or the name,

came up in the 80s and 90s when some professors

were looking into the statistics curriculum,

and they thought it would be better to call it data science.

But what is data science?

I see data science as one's attempt to work with data

to find answers to questions that they are exploring.

In a nutshell, it's more about data

than it is about science.

If you have data, and you have curiosity,

and you're working with data,

and you're manipulating it,

you're exploring it,

the very exercise of going through analyzing data,

trying to get some answers from it, is data science.

Data science is relevant today

because we have tons of data available.

We used to worry about lack of data;

now we have a data deluge.

In the past, we didn't have algorithms;

now we have algorithms.

In the past, the software was expensive;

now it's open source and free.

In the past, we couldn't store large amounts of data;

now, for a fraction of the cost,

we can have gazillions of data sets for very low costs,

so the tools to work with data,

the very availability of data,

and the ability to store and analyze data,

it's all cheap, it's all available,

it's all ubiquitous, it's here.

There's never been a better time to be a data scientist.