Why Data Science?

Most important decisions are made with only partial information and uncertainoutcomes. However, the degree of uncertainty for many decisions can be reducedsharply by public access to large data sets and the computational toolsrequired to analyze them effectively. Data-driven decision making has alreadytransformed a tremendous breadth of industries, including finance, advertising,manufacturing, and real estate. At the same time, a wide range of academicdisciplines are evolving rapidly to incorporate large-scale data analysis intotheir theory and practice.

Studying data science enables individuals to bring these techniques to bear ontheir work, their scientific endeavors, and their personal decisions. Criticalthinking has long been a hallmark of a rigorous education, but critiques areoften most effective when supported by data. A critical analysis of any aspectof the world, may it be business or social science, involves inductivereasoning; conclusions can rarely been proven outright, only supported bythe available evidence. Data science provides the means to make precise,reliable, and quantitative arguments about any set of observations. Withunprecedented access to information and computing, critical thinking aboutany aspect of the world that can be measured would be incomplete withouteffective inferential techniques.

The world has too many unanswered questions and difficult challenges to leavethis critical reasoning to only a few specialists. All educated members of society can build the capacity to reason about data. The tools, techniques, and data sets are all readily available; this text aims to make them accessible to everyone.

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