What Is Data Science?

This chapter covers many of the techniques that data scientists use—data mining, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI). It explores the use of big data. This will complete the major tools in the toolbox of the data scientist that one feel should be “the essentials that every data scientist should know.” Data science is not nearly as old as AI, machine learning or data mining. In fact, the term is attributed to a statistician, William S. Cleveland, who worked at Bell Labs and Purdue University. Many programs that were labeled as Masters of Science in Data Analytics, Business Analytics or Predictive Analytics are changing their names. Scott worked previously with Northwestern University in the School of Professional Studies, Masters of Science in Predictive Analytics. There is truth in replacing those terms in a rotation, because at times a data scientist will be a data engineer, at times a statistician, at times a machine learning or AI developer, at times a storyteller.