1.4 DATA SCIENCE TASKS
The most common data science tasks are the following:
- Description
- Estimation
- Classification
- Clustering
- Prediction
- Association
Next, we describe what each of these tasks represent and in which chapters these tasks are covered.
1.4.1 Description
Data scientists are often called upon to describe patterns and trends lying within the data. For example, a data scientist may describe a cluster of customers most likely to leave our company's service as those with high‐usage minutes and a high number of customer service calls. After describing this cluster, the data scientist may explain that the high number of customer service calls indicates perhaps that the customer is unhappy. Working with the marketing team, the analyst can then suggest possible interventions to explore to retain such customers.
The description task is in widespread use around the world by specialists and nonspecialists alike. For example, when a sports announcer states that a baseball...