Important Topics in Data Science (with Brief Explanation)
1. Introduction to Data Science
• Definition: Interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, algorithms, and systems
to extract insights from structured and unstructured data.
• Components: Statistics, Programming, Domain Knowledge, Data Analysis.
2. Data Collection and Data Sources
• Data is collected from APIs, databases, web scraping, surveys, IoT devices, etc.
• Importance: Reliable data sources determine the quality of insights.
3. Data Preprocessing
• Tasks: Cleaning (handling missing/duplicate data), transformation, normalization,
encoding categorical data.
• It is the most time-consuming yet critical step in a data science pipeline.
4. Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
• Goal: Understand the dataset using statistics and visualization.
• Techniques: Mean, median, mode, histograms, boxplots, correlation matrix, outlier
detection.
5. Data Visualization
• Helps to communicate findings clearly using graphs.
• Tools: Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly, Tableau, Power BI.
• Charts: Bar chart, line chart, scatter plot, heatmap, pie chart.
6. Probability and Statistics
• Core foundation for data interpretation and modeling.
• Key Concepts: Probability distributions, Bayes Theorem, Mean, Variance, Hypothesis
Testing, Confidence Intervals.
7. Machine Learning Basics
• Building predictive models using data.
• Supervised: Regression, Classification.
• Unsupervised: Clustering, Dimensionality Reduction.
• Reinforcement: Learning via rewards.
8. Model Evaluation and Validation
• Evaluate how well a model performs using:
o For Classification: Accuracy, Precision, Recall, F1 Score, Confusion Matrix.
o For Regression: MSE, RMSE, R² Score.
• Use Cross-Validation to ensure model generalization.
9. Feature Engineering
• Creating, transforming, or selecting the most important features for your models.
• Includes: Feature scaling, encoding, dimensionality reduction (PCA).
10. Big Data Technologies
• Hadoop: Framework for storing and processing big data.
• Spark: Fast, in-memory data processing engine.
• Tools handle volume, velocity, and variety of big data.
11. SQL and Databases
• Data scientists frequently use SQL to query relational databases.
• Key concepts: Joins, Aggregations, Subqueries, Window Functions.
12. Python/R for Data Science
• Python: Widely used with libraries like pandas, NumPy, Scikit-learn.
• R: Strong in statistical modeling and visualization.
13. Data Ethics and Privacy
• Ensuring ethical use of data: fairness, transparency, and user privacy (e.g., GDPR
compliance).
• Avoiding algorithmic bias and ensuring responsible AI.
14. Deployment of Models
• Taking ML models into production using:
o Flask, FastAPI for APIs.
o Docker for containerization.
o Cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, Azure.
15. Real-world Case Studies & Projects
• Examples: Customer churn prediction, recommendation systems, fraud detection,
sales forecasting.
• Showcases your ability to solve real problems using data.
