Homework 1: What is Data Science?

The goals of this homework are:

Provide an introduction to the field of data science.
Begin to understand the processes and tools involved in data science.
Learn some basic terms associated with data science.

Read

The TechTarget article on data science. You should follow a few of the links, including the definitions of raw data and information. You should read this at a medium level of depth, you want to pick up the general meaning of the term data science and a few basic definitions, but you don't need to understand all terms and all details of the article. Watch the video attached to the page.
Ahmad Johari's blog post on the definition of data science.
Pete Warden's opinion on the term data science.

If these articles have piqued your interest, the following are also informative:

A blog post discussing the definition of data science.
An article defining data science from a data related job cite.
UC Berkeley's program sales page defining data science from a degree program point of view.
Harvard Business Review claimed that data science was the Sexiest Job of the 21^st Century. Find out why.

Furthermore you can follow the links off of any of those pages for more articles.

Respond

Please provide in your own words answers/responses to the following. You should type your answers using word and save the document somewhere you can find it. You will submit your answers in future homework.

What is data science?
Name three disciplines involved in data science?
What is the difference between information and data?
What are three major tasks a data scientist performs?
Do you think that a knowledge of basic data science skills could be useful for you in your college career? In your future profession? Why or why not?

I expect your answers to be in the form of short paragraphs. Single word answers are too short, and you do not need to provide a full essay for each question. Simply provide a summary of your thoughts on what you have read.

Submit

Again, please save this document where you can find it. We will using this document as part of email and dropbox exercises in the near future. In addition, we will be discussing this information in the next class.