If you search for data science or data scientist, you get a lot of pretty Venn Diagrams or cool infographics that happily point out that this is a multidisciplinary field that includes statistics, problem solving, computer science and engineering, data visualization, communication, and domain expertise.

Beyond those graphics in your search, you will find dense articles, blog posts, and flashy ads about the latest machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) tools and the custom fitted hardware to enable them. Hell, even Apple’s newest models of iPhone have custom hardware and AI built into them.

While I have spent a lot of time working on all of the skills above and trying to digest and enjoy some of the new hotness in ML and AI, I think that this tends to make data science less approachable and confuses people about what data science really is all about.

In the end, data science is about finding data supported answers to real problems. While sometimes it does seem enticing (and it certainly can seem impressive on a resume or in talking to your friends, family, and strangers) to jump straight to the bleeding edge of the data science spectrum, data science is a long and iterative path.

Very generally speaking, data science is issue discovery, data discovery, data visualization and story telling, advanced analytics, testing and predictive analytics, and ethics (stop at any step if and when it makes sense; repeat a step if necessary).

SO… WHAT IS DATA SCIENCE?

DATA SCIENCE IS ALWAYS ITERATION AND COMMUNICATION

To begin with, data science is inherently a communicative process. A data scientist must be in constant communication with the relevant stakeholders. This can be the executive asking questions, the DBA who knows the data best, the customer who is being affected by your model’s decision, the person who was handed a copy of your presentation from 6 months ago, etc. In effect, a data scientist works for all of these people and needs their input to be successful.

Also, as you learn about the problem and data while progressing through the lifecycle, you may need to go back a step (or more) and update (again).

DATA SCIENCE IS ALWAYS ISSUE DISCOVERY

It is easy to ask a question: “How many users do we have on our platform?” or “What should we expect in sales for this holiday season?”

A data scientist must understand the nuance to the question and the context in which the question is being asked. For the first question posed above: What type of users? Web users? Active users? If it is active users, active since when? Paying Customers? Anyone who has ever logged in? You get the point.

Once you have clarified the question (which requires iteration with your stakeholders), zoom out. Why is this person asking that question? What are they going to do with that information? Is it worth it to spend a ton of effort on it? This all informs how to tackle the problem and the lens through which to look at the data.

DATA SCIENCE IS ALWAYS DATA DISCOVERY

There is no data science without data.

However, the data is never what you are expecting. The real world is messy and so too is the data. There will be nonsensical values, missing values, duplicate values, etc. Data changes over time and is sometimes in weird formats.

Data scientists cannot proceed without a comprehensive understanding of the data. This is a collaborative process and typically results in more questions for issue discovery. The hope is to proceed from this set with a viable dataset. Sometimes, though, you cannot proceed because the data is not usable.

DATA SCIENCE IS MOST OF THE TIME DATA VISUALIZATION AND STORY TELLING

Taking raw data and turning it into insight is pivotal for data science. Once the data scientist discovers an insight, though, she has to communicate that outwards.

In this regards, data science is a process of being very thoughtful about the message and the best way to convey it. This comes in the form of presentations and dashboards using words, tables, charts, and graphs. Beyond this, data science is simplifying complex analysis into consumable pieces for the relevant stakeholders.

Side note: Data science is NOT pie charts or 3d effects. Period.

DATA SCIENCE IS OFTEN ADVANCED ANALYTICS

It is rare that a data scientist will get through the data discovery and story telling steps without anomalies popping up. Investigating these anomalies and other quirks is often referred to as advanced analytics. These often turn into their own presentations and dashboards, too.

DATA SCIENCE IS SOMETIMES TESTING AND PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS

One prerequisite to this step is having a good baseline understanding of the area in which you are trying to model. How do you know if your model is improving anything if you’ve never measured it before?

Predictive analytics can be cool stuff, like random forests, GBM, neural networks, but regression is often easier to implement and better to understand. It is usually best to start small and do tests to see if your prediction moves the needle in a meaningful way.

Prediction comes in a lot of flavors: in marketing you are trying to predict who is the most apt to buy your thing; in credit and finance you are predicting who will (or won’t) pay you back; in computer vision, you are predicting what an object is.

DATA SCIENCE IS ALWAYS ETHICS

It is not in the lifecycle diagram, but it really should be. The hard part about adding it is that it needs to live at every step of the process. Data scientists often get access to sensitive data and are asked to make powerful tools that affect real people in real ways. Knowing what your outputs are being used for and why they are being used is necessary to start, then knowing when that crosses an ethical boundary (and speaking up). We all come with our biases and need to make sure we are not propagating them through our work - it is very easy in data science to forget this.

Use data for good. Primum non nocere. First do no harm.

SO… WHAT IS DATA SCIENCE?

Data science is a lot of things, but primarily it is problem solving. It fits within every business unit and in every industry. Many people are doing data science every day, and have been for a long time!