Learning to Love Data Science

Editor’s Note

This book is a collection of reports that Mike Barlow wrote for O’Reilly Media in 2013, 2014, and 2015. The reports focused on topics that are generally associated with data science, machine learning, predictive analytics, and “big data,” a term that has largely fallen from favor.

Since Mike is a journalist and not a scientist, he approached the reports from the perspective of a curious outsider. The reports betray his sense of amused detachment, which is probably the right way to approach writing about a field like data science, and his ultimate faith in the value of technology, which seems unjustifiably optimistic.

At any rate, the reports provide valuable snapshots, taken almost randomly, of a field whose scale, scope, and influence are growing steadily. Mike’s reports are like dispatches from a battlefield; they aren’t history, but they provide an interesting and reasonably accurate picture of life on the front lines.

Michael Loukides, Vice President, Content Strategy, O’Reilly Media