Data Science For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1

Wrapping Your Head Around Data Science

IN THIS CHAPTER

Deploying data science methods across various industries

Piecing together the core data science components

Identifying viable data science solutions to business challenges

Exploring data science career alternatives

For over a decade now, everyone has been absolutely deluged by data. It’s coming from every computer, every mobile device, every camera, and every imaginable sensor — and now it’s even coming from watches and other wearable technologies. Data is generated in every social media interaction we humans make, every file we save, every picture we take, and every query we submit; data is even generated when we do something as simple as ask a favorite search engine for directions to the closest ice cream shop.

Although data immersion is nothing new, you may have noticed that the phenomenon is accelerating. Lakes, puddles, and rivers of data have turned to floods and veritable tsunamis of structured, semistructured, and unstructured data that’s streaming from almost every activity that takes place in both the digital ...