Think Like a Data Scientist

Chapter 5. Data assessment: poking and prodding

This chapter covers

• Descriptive statistics and other techniques for learning about your data
• Checking assumptions you have about your data and its contents
• Sifting through your data for examples of things you want to find
• Performing quick, rough analyses to gain insight before spending a lot of time on software or product development

Figure 5.1 shows where we are in the data science process: assessing the data available and the progress we’ve made so far. In previous chapters we’ve searched for, captured, and wrangled data. Most likely, you’ve learned a lot along the way, but you’re still not ready to throw the data at the problem and hope that questions get answered. First, you have to learn ...