Introduction

Data is the foundation of data science. Data is the systematic record of a specified characters, quantity or symbols on which operations are performed by a computer, which may be stored and transmitted. It is a compilation of data to be utilised for a certain purpose, such as a survey or an analysis. When structured, data may be referred to as information. The data source (original data, secondary data) is also an essential consideration.

Data comes in many shapes and forms, but can generally be thought of as being the result of some random experiment - an experiment whose outcome cannot be determined in advance, but whose workings are still subject to analysis. Data from a random experiment are often stored in a table or spreadsheet. A statistical convention to denote variables is often called as features or columns and individual items (or units) as rows.