Book Image

Principles of Data Science - Third Edition

By : Sinan Ozdemir
Book Image

Principles of Data Science - Third Edition

By: Sinan Ozdemir

Overview of this book

Principles of Data Science bridges mathematics, programming, and business analysis, empowering you to confidently pose and address complex data questions and construct effective machine learning pipelines. This book will equip you with the tools to transform abstract concepts and raw statistics into actionable insights. Starting with cleaning and preparation, you’ll explore effective data mining strategies and techniques before moving on to building a holistic picture of how every piece of the data science puzzle fits together. Throughout the book, you’ll discover statistical models with which you can control and navigate even the densest or the sparsest of datasets and learn how to create powerful visualizations that communicate the stories hidden in your data. With a focus on application, this edition covers advanced transfer learning and pre-trained models for NLP and vision tasks. You’ll get to grips with advanced techniques for mitigating algorithmic bias in data as well as models and addressing model and data drift. Finally, you’ll explore medium-level data governance, including data provenance, privacy, and deletion request handling. By the end of this data science book, you'll have learned the fundamentals of computational mathematics and statistics, all while navigating the intricacies of modern ML and large pre-trained models like GPT and BERT.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)

Structured versus unstructured data

The first question we want to ask ourselves about an entire dataset is whether we are working with structured or unstructured data. The answer to this question can mean the difference between needing three days or three weeks to perform a proper analysis.

The basic breakdown is as follows (this is a rehashed definition of organized and unorganized data from Chapter 1):

  • Structured (that is, organized) data: This is data that can be thought of as observations and characteristics. It is usually organized using a table method (rows and columns) that can be organized in a spreadsheet format or a relational database.
  • Unstructured (that is, unorganized) data: This data exists as a free entity and does not follow any standard organization hierarchy such as images, text, or videos.

Here are a few examples that could help you differentiate between the two:

  • Most data that exists in text form, including server logs and Facebook...