# What is Data Science? {-#what-is}

## What is data?


## What is science?

Lorem ipsum

## Questions in data science

Questions regarding "the data"?

**Data Provenence**

- What, literally, is "the data"?

- What is its provenance?
  - Who measured it?
  - How did they measure it?
    - Which measurement instrument?
    - Which model?
    - Which software and which version?
  - Where did it come from?
  - When was it measured?
  - How precise and reproducible were the measurement devices?
  - Why was it originally measured?
  - Who paid for it to be collected and/or analyzed?
  - Did they make any implicit or explicit assumptions?
  - Are there any potentially confounding variables that merit attention?
  - What have they, or others, done with the data?
      - Do we agree with these results?
      - Are they relevant to our goals?
      - What other questions can this data reasonable answer?
  - Are there suspicious and or uninformative observations and or variables?
    - How would I know?
    - Given my previous knowledge about the topic, what would I expect to see?
  - Can a mathematical relationship between variables be defined?
    - Does it have any real-world value? Should I care?
    - Do one or more variables predict another?
    - Are they actually relevant, or is it just due to chance? Do I care?
    - Why would I want to do that? Does it make real-world sense? 
    
**Data Validation**

  - Is this raw data? How could I tell if it isn't?
  - Are there any signs of data munging (processing)?
  - Are there any signs of suspicious data manipulation?
    - Does it matter?
  - What is the best way to describe each variable?
  - Are there interesting clusters in the observations?
    - Is that relevant question?

**Analytical Questions**
