Data science is the art of drawing insights from data. Since data is being produced at an unprecedented rate, the field is expanding quickly. Businesses must have the capacity to gather, store, and analyse enormous amounts of data in order to stay competitive. To be successful in data science, one must have a firm grasp of the fundamentals. The importance of data types and structures cannot be overstated. We shall examine the fundamentals of data types and structures in data science in this article.
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The Basics of Data Science: Understanding Data Types and Structures
Data Types
The various sorts of data that exist are referred to as data types. Data types are used in programming to specify the types of data that can be stored in a variable. Different data types are supported by various programming languages. But the most typical data types in data science are:
- Numeric Data: Numeric data refers to data that contains numbers. You can further categorise numerical data into two groups:
Whole number-containing data is referred to as integer data. Examples are 1, 2, 3, etc.
Data that contains decimal numbers is referred to as floating-point data. Examples include 1.1, 2.3, 3.14, etc. - Categorical Data: Categorical data refers to data that contains categories or labels. Two categories can be used to further categorise categorical data:
- Nominal Data: Nominal data is defined as information that lacks a specific order. For instance, there is no particular order to the colours of cars, which can be red, blue, or green.
- Ordinal Data: Ordinal data refers to data that has a natural order. T-shirt sizes, for instance, can be small, medium, or big, and these divisions follow a logical hierarchy.
Text Data: Data that contains characters or strings is referred to as text data. Social media, customer reviews, and other unstructured data are frequently analysed using text data.
Data Structures
The arrangement of data is referred to as data structures. The speed and effectiveness of data analysis can be impacted by the way the data is organised. The most popular data structures in data science are:
- Arrays: Arrays are a collection of variables of the same data type. One-dimensional or multidimensional arrays are both possible. While multidimensional arrays resemble a grid of values, one-dimensional arrays are similar to a list of values.
- Lists: A list is a grouping of variables with various data types. Lists can be used to store data that doesn’t have a set length and can contain any mix of data types.
- Dictionaries: Dictionaries are a collection of key-value pairs. Dictionaries can be used to store information that has a distinctive key or identity.
- DataFrames: Two-dimensional data structures known as DataFrames are frequently employed in data analysis. When working with huge datasets, DataFrames are especially helpful for organising data into rows and columns.
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In conclusion, anyone hoping to excel in data science must have a solid understanding of data kinds and architectures. Data structures enable effective data organisation and manipulation, whereas data types enable categorization and analysis of data. You will be well on your way to becoming a data science specialist if you understand these fundamentals.