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The goal of data science is to improve decision making through the analysis of data. Today data science determines the ads we see online, the books and movies that are recommended to us online, which emails are filtered into our spam folders, and even how much we pay for health insurance. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a concise introduction to the emerging field of data science, explaining its evolution, current uses, data infrastructure issues, and ethical challenges.

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John D. Kelleher is a Professor of Computer Science and the Academic Leader of the Information, Communication, and Entertainment Research Institute at the Dublin Institute of Technology. He is the coauthor of Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Predictive Data Analytics (MIT Press).

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