Chapter 1

Understanding the Five Areas of Data Science

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Learning about data science

check Understanding big data

check Discovering the five steps of data science

Data science affects our lives in more ways than you may think. When you use Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo, you're using a sophisticated application of data science. The suggestions for other search terms that come up when you're typing? They come from data science. Medical diagnoses and interpretations of images and symptoms are examples of data science. Doctors rely on data science interpretations more and more these days.

As with most of the topics in this book, data science looks intimidating to the uninitiated. Inferences, data graphs, and statistics, oh my! However, just as in previous chapters on artificial intelligence, if you dig in and look at some examples, you can get a handle on what data science is and isn’t.

In this chapter, we introduce you to the use of Python in data science and talk about just enough theory to get you started. If nothing else, we want to leave you with an understanding of the process of data science and give you a better idea of what's behind some of the results of big data analysis ...

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