What is Data? Why Data Science?

Before we start with Case Studies and Guesstimates, you need to know the difference between 4 terms which might look identical to you but are very different.

Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom
This is called DIKW hierarchy, you can Google and learn a lot about this hierarchy, but since you are spending your precious time on this website, it’s my job to make you understand.

What is data?
Data is as simple as something raw. You will know something when you look at some data, but it will never give you a complete picture.
51 Centuries, 96 Half-Centuries, Sachin Tendulkar, India, etc. These are data.

What is information?
Information gives you a bit more detail about the above data. It is the collection of data. Using the above data points, I can give you information like

Sachin Tendulkar is an Indian Cricketer and has scored the highest number of Centuries in Internation cricket.

The above is some derivation of the data and eventually, we collected multiple data points.

What is Knowledge?
Knowledge is the awareness or conscious understanding of the information.
We have this information that Sachin is one of the best Internation Cricket, now the knowledge part will tell you that He is the backbone of Indian Cricket Team and He should be a part of the important cricket series if His form is not that bad because it will put a little more pressure on the opponent.

Now, What is wisdom?
Wisdom is the peak of this hierarchy. You look into data, frame information, derive knowledge and then put everything together.

Now, Dhoni is the captain of the team, the required run rate is high and we need 30 runs off the last 2 overs, the next batsman to come is Sachin(Yeah, the openers ducked it up). Now the wisdom of Dhoni will come into the picture and he will move up in the batting order and will come on the first down despite being a middle-order batsman.

The reason why we wanted to discuss it beforehand is to make sure that you have a good understanding of the term data and the terms which you think you understand !!

Why Data Science?
Don’t you want to crunch numbers to find out how many people will buy the latest iPhone from Amazon in the upcoming sale?
Do you get goosebumps by just thinking about creating an AI powered chatbot and make your friend go “Wooooo” while using it?
Don’t you get excited thinking about the impact your analysis will make, that too on the Higher Leadership level?

If the answer is NOOO, then Data Science is for you because we deal with really messy data, cleaning it with almost our bare hands and applying basic Linear Regression to fancy Neural Network to make the world free from errors(Ohkkk…I over-committed), but to be honest, it’s a really awesome and impactful job where you can actually be valuable for a company or your Client.

So, please don’t get motivated with a higher salary switch or adding something into your resume. Give some time to understand the capabilities of Data Science for the next few days.

First LEARN and then remove the L.

This was our 2nd class, you are doing all good and most probably you have read the first and second day of the course on the very first day(You engineersss !!!!)

Let’s start with the Case Study to understand “How to Understand a problem”.

Please come tomorrow, don’t rush today only 🙂
Same time, same place.

XtraMous




Author: TheDataMonk

I am the Co-Founder of The Data Monk. I have a total of 6+ years of analytics experience 3+ years at Mu Sigma 2 years at OYO 1 year and counting at The Data Monk I am an active trader and a logically sarcastic idiot :)