Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

After a few more years, I think I understand the essence of Data Science. It isn’t that complicated.

I wrote a post in November of 2020 attempting to describe the essence of data science. A few thoughts came to me recently. So here goes another attempt.

A person has a large amount of information (spreadsheets, databases, data lakes, a copy of Wikipedia). The person’s goal is to reduce this large amount of information to a few statements of some value to some other person.

There is too much information for the person to reach the goal in a time period that satisfies some other person.

and

The person does not have enough human assistance to reach the goal

so

The person uses computing to reach the goal.

Perhaps that is the essence of data science.