Chapter two

data science

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 content
Overview of Data Science
Data and Information
Data Types and Their Representation
Data Value Chains
Basic Concepts of Big data

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 2.1. Overview of Data Science

Data science is a multi-disciplinary field that uses scientific

methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge
and insights from structured, semi-structured and unstructured data.
Data Science is the area of study which involves extracting insights
from vast amounts of data by the use of various scientific methods,
algorithms, and processes. It helps you to discover hidden patterns
from the raw data.
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Data Science is an interdisciplinary field that allows you to extract
knowledge from structured or unstructured data.
Data science enables you to translate a business problem into a
research project and then translate it back into a practical solution.

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What are data and information?
Data can be defined as a representation of facts, concepts, or
instructions in a formalized manner, which should be suitable for
communication, interpretation, or processing, by human or electronic
machines.
It can be described as unprocessed facts and figures.

It is represented with the help of characters such as alphabets (A-Z,

a-z), digits (0-9) or special characters (+, -, /, *, <,>, =, etc.).
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Information is the processed data on which decisions and actions
are based.
Information is data that has been processed into a form that is
meaningful to the recipient and is of real or perceived value in the
current or the prospective action or decision of recipient.
Furtherer more, information is interpreted data; created from
organized, structured, and processed data in a particular context.

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Data Processing Cycle
Data processing is the re-structuring or re-ordering of data by people
or machines to increase their usefulness and add values for a
particular purpose.
 Data processing consists of the following basic steps: Input,
Processing and Output. These three steps constitute the data
processing cycle.

Fig. 1.Data processing Cycle

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Input - in this step, the input data is prepared in some convenient form
for processing.
The form will depend on the processing machine.
For example, when electronic computers are used, the input data can
be recorded on any one of the several types of storage medium, such
as hard disk, CD, flash disk and so on.
Processing- in this step, the input data is changed to produce data in a
more useful form.
 For example, interest can be calculated on deposit to a bank, or a
summary of sales for the month can be calculated from the sales
orders.

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Output-at this stage, the result of the proceeding processing step is
collected.
The particular form of the output data depends on the use of the
data.
For example, output data may be payroll for employees.

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 Data types and their representation
Data types can be described from diverse perspectives.
In computer science and computer programming, for
instance, a data type is simply an attribute of data that tells
the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to
use the data.

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1. Data types from Computer programming perspective
Almost all programming languages explicitly include the notion of
data type, though different languages may use different terminology.
Common data types include:
Integers(int)- is used to represent whole numbers, mathematically
known as integers
Booleans(bool)- is used to represent restricted to one of two
values:true or false
Characters(char)- is used to represent a single character
Floating-point numbers(float)- is used to represent real numbers
Alphanumeric strings(string)- used to represent a combination of
characters and numbers
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2. Data types from Data Analytics perspective
From a data analytics point of view, it is important to
understand that there are three common types of data
types or structures:
Structured
Semi-structured and
Unstructured data types.

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 Structured Data
Structured data is data that adheres to a pre-defined data
model and is therefore straightforward to analyze.
 Structured data conforms to a tabular format with a
relationship between the different rows and columns.
 Common examples of structured data are Excel files or SQL
databases.
Each of these has structured rows and columns that can be
sorted.

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Semi-structured Data
Semi-structured data is a form of structured data that does not conform with
the formal structure of data models associated with relational databases or
other forms of data tables, but nonetheless, contains tags or other markers to
separate semantic elements and enforce hierarchies of records and fields
within the data.
Therefore, it is also known as a self-describing structure.

 Examples of semi-structured data include JSON and XML are forms of

semi-structured
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Unstructured Data
Unstructured data is information that either does not have a predefined data
model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner.
Unstructured information is typically text-heavy but may contain data such as
dates, numbers, and facts as well.
This results in irregularities and ambiguities that make it difficult to understand
using traditional programs as compared to data stored in structured databases.
Common examples of unstructured data include audio, video files or NoSQL.

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Metadata – Data about Data
• The last category of data type is metadata.
• From a technical point of view, this is not a separate
data structure, but it is one of the most important
elements for Big Data analysis and big data solutions.
• Metadata is data about data.
• It provides additional information about a specific set
of data.
• In a set of photographs, for example, metadata could
describe when and where the photos were taken.
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Data value Chain
The Data Value Chain is introduced to describe the information flow
within a big data system as a series of steps needed to generate value
and useful insights from data. The Big Data Value Chain identifies the
following key high-level activities:

Fig2.Data Value Chain

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1. Data Acquisition
• It is the process of gathering, filtering, and cleaning data
before it is put in a data warehouse or any other storage
solution on which data analysis can be carried out.
• Data acquisition is one of the major big data challenges in
terms of infrastructure requirements.
• The infrastructure required to support the acquisition of big
data must deliver low, predictable latency in both capturing
data and in executing queries; be able to handle very high
transaction volumes, often in a distributed environment and
support flexible and dynamic data structures.
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2. Data Analysis
• It is concerned with making the raw data acquired
amenable to use in decision-making as well as domain-
specific usage.
• Data analysis involves exploring, transforming, and
modeling data with the goal of highlighting relevant
data, synthesizing and extracting useful hidden
information with high potential from a business point of
view.
• Related areas include data mining, business intelligence,
and machine learning.
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3. Data Curation
• It is the active management of data over its life cycle to ensure it meets
the necessary data quality requirements for its effective usage.
• Data curation processes can be categorized into different activities
such as content creation, selection, classification, transformation,
validation, and preservation.
• Data curation is performed by expert curators that are responsible for
improving the accessibility and quality of data.
• Data curators (also known as scientific curators or data annotators) hold
the responsibility of ensuring that data are trustworthy, discoverable,
accessible, reusable and fit their purpose.
• A key trend for the duration of big data utilizes community and crowd
sourcing approaches. 21
4. Data Storage
• It is the persistence and management of data in a scalable way that
satisfies the needs of applications that require fast access to the data.
• Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) have been the
main, and almost unique, a solution to the storage paradigm for nearly
40 years.
• However, the ACID (Atomicity,Consistency,Isolation,and
Durability) properties that guarantee database transactions lack
flexibility with regard to schema changes and the performance and
fault tolerance when data volumes and complexity grow, making them
unsuitable for big data scenarios.
• NoSQL technologies have been designed with the scalability goal in
mind and present a wide range of solutions based on alternative data
models. 22
5. Data Usage
• It covers the data-driven business activities that need
access to data, its analysis, and the tools needed to
integrate the data analysis within the business activity.
• Data usage in business decision making can enhance
competitiveness through the reduction of costs,
increased added value, or any other parameter that can
be measured against existing performance criteria.

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Basic concepts of big data
What Is Big Data?
• Big data is the term for a collection of data sets so large and
complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand
database management tools or traditional data processing
applications.
• In this context, a “large dataset” means a dataset too large to
reasonably process or store with traditional tooling or on a single
computer.
• This means that the common scale of big datasets is constantly
shifting and may vary significantly from organization to
organization.
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Big data is characterized by 4V and more:
• Volume: large amounts of data Zeta bytes/Massive datasets
• Velocity: Data is live streaming or in motion
• Variety: data comes in many different forms from diverse sources
• Veracity: can we trust the data? How accurate is it? etc.

Fig 3. Characteristics of Big data

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Clustered Computing
Clustered Computing
Because of the qualities of big data, individual computers are
often inadequate for handling the data at most stages.
To better address the high storage and computational needs of
big data, computer clusters are a better fit.
 Big data clustering software combines the resources of many
smaller machines, seeking to provide a number of benefits:

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• Resource Pooling: Combining the available storage space to hold data
is a clear benefit, but CPU and memory pooling are also extremely
important.
• Processing large datasets requires large amounts of all three of these
resources.
• High Availability: Clusters can provide varying levels of fault tolerance
and availability guarantees to prevent hardware or software failures
from affecting access to data and processing.
• This becomes increasingly important as we continue to emphasize the
importance of real-time analytics.
• Easy Scalability: Clusters make it easy to scale horizontally by adding
additional machines to the group.
• This means the system can react to changes in resource requirements
without expanding the physical resources on a machine.
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 THANK YOU
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