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Data and Society

Data Science: an interdisciplinary field


Ariel Rokem

Follow along at: http://arokem.github.io/2017-10-12-data-science-interdisciplinary

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"All across our campus, the process of discovery will increasingly rely on researchers’ ability to extract knowledge from vast amounts of data... In order to remain at the forefront, UW must be a leader in advancing these techniques and technologies, and in making [them] accessible to researchers in the broadest imaginable range of fields"

The paradigms of scientific discovery

1. Empirical (experimental)

Example: Galileo Galilei's experiment (16th Century)

The paradigms of scientific discovery

1. Empirical (experimental)

2. Theoretical (mathematical)

Example: Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism (19th century)

The paradigms of scientific discovery

1. Empirical (experimental)

2. Theoretical (mathematical)

3. Simulation (computational)

Example: Finite element simulations

The paradigms of scientific discovery

1. Empirical (experimental)

2. Theoretical (mathematical)

3. Simulation (computational)

4. Data-intensive (eScience)


Jim Gray

Examples

Human genetics

Astronomy

Brain science


Human genetics

The DNA in our cells encodes all of our hereditary information

1953: Structure first elucidated

1984: US government decides to sequence the human genome

  3.3 B base-pairs!

1990: the Human Genome Project launches

2001: first draft published

2003: HGP completed

Tremendous impact

HGP fact sheet

> 1,800 human disease-related genes

> 2,000 genetic tests for human conditions

> 350 biotechnology companies

Recent estimate : $3.8B investment that drove $796B in economic impact.

But that was just the start!


Meaning that large amounts of data keep getting generated!

But that was just the start!


Stephens et al. (2015), PLoS Biology
<= Laptop
<= 1000x
<= 1Mx
<= 1Bx

1,900 BCE!

1960's

1990's

Digital survey astronomy and digital catalogs

Sloan Digital Sky Survey (1998)

But that was just the beginning!

Sloan Digital Sky Survey (1998)

LSST (2019)

Neuroscience: the age of brain observatories

The Allen Institute for Brain Science (2003 -- )

Open source software for science

The Python programming language:

Relatively easy to learn

Free and open source

"Batteries included"

The scientific Python ecosystem

The scientific Python ecosystem

The scientific Python ecosystem

The scientific Python ecosystem

Example: The LIGO collaboration

https://losc.ligo.org/tutorials/

Reproducible and Open science!

http://arokem.org
arokem@gmail.com
@arokem
github.com/arokem