Emergence of Data Science as a Critical Discipline in Biostatistics

The purpose of this lesson is to provide a glimpse of contemporary data science. This lesson will offer a definition of data science, as promulgated by the federal government. There will be extensive discussion on how data science fits into the higher education (e.g., postsecondary, grades 13 and above) curriculum. There is also a discussion on employment opportunities for those who see a future career in which skills in data science are required, with data science either a primary job requirement or at least a secondary job requirement. This lesson also provides a general introduction to R and computing issues inherent to R, where R is used as a platform in data science. The addenda provides more specific information, but still at an introductory level, to the tidyverse ecosystem. Those who wish to use this data science text but are totally new to R should consider reviewing materials from among the many published and free resources on R, either prior to or at least concurrent to the use of this text.