Data science is rapidly growing and is a part of everyone's daily life. It is the culmination of statistics, computer science, and storytelling. It is data science. But what is the history of data science? In this post I will be giving a run down of the brief origin of data science.
“I know of no person or group that is taking nearly adequate advantage of the graphical potentialities of the computer.” - John Tukey
To begin in 1963, John W. Tukey, a mathematical statistician, is often credited for predicting that electronic computing would have an immense impact on data analysis. Although he did not necessarily invent data science, he was one of the first to recognize what data science could become. Later, Peter Naur was credited with naming data science as an alternative to computer science in 1974.
Subsequently, personal computers were being released in the early 1980s. The International Business Machines Corporation set the trend in 1981. Apple followed in 1983, coming out with their first personal computer with a graphical user interface. After many more computers and technical advancements, twenty years later, data was beginning to be used in the context of data science that we know of today. Meaning that data was being taken advantage of by using it as profitable information.
Later, in 2005, The National Science Board stated data scientists are “computer scientists, database and software programmers, disciplinary experts, curators, and expert annotators, librarians, archivists and others, who are crucial to the successful management of a digital data collection.” In my opinion, this statement caused other companies to begin to view data differently. Companies in every facet started to view data as something that they could capitalize on, causing data science to grow immensely as a study and a career.
Throughout the continuing advancement of technology, two men popularized the term data science. The first is DJ Patil, the author of Data Driven, Ethics and Data Science, Building Data Science Teams, and Data Jujitsu. Patil was also the Chief Data Scientist of the United States Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2015 to 2017. In addition to Patil, Jeff Hammerbacher is recognized for universalizing the phrase data science. Hammerbacher, a Harvard graduate, led the data team at Facebook from 2006 to 2008 and worked as a quantitative analyst on Wall Street. He is also the author of Beautiful Data. All in all, both men are considered pioneers in data science.
Today, data scientists are valuable to every company and data science is recognized as one of the most important careers. Also, more and more universities are adding data science to their course catalogs as degree programs. In short, data science has evolved incredibly in the past few decades and will continue to do so for many to come.
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