About this Book

This book is about data science: a field that uses results from statistics, machine learning, and computer science to create predictive models. Because of the broad nature of data science, it’s important to discuss it a bit and to outline the approach we take in this book.

What is data science?

The statistician William S. Cleveland defined data science as an interdisciplinary field larger than statistics itself. We define data science as managing the process that can transform hypotheses and data into actionable predictions. Typical predictive analytic goals include predicting who will win an election, what products will sell well together, which loans will default, or which advertisements will be clicked on. The data scientist ...

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