Know Your Data
Explore how to identify and understand different types of data and their origins. Learn why knowing the structure and source of your data is essential to asking the right questions, avoiding mistakes, and effectively analyzing data in data science projects.
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Before we start asking big questions, building models, or writing clever queries, we need to take a step back and ask something simpler: What is this data we’re working with? Where did it come from? How is it organized? These might seem like basic questions, but they’re the foundation of everything we do in data science.
Know the backstory
Every dataset has a backstory. It might be clean and well-organized, or it might be messy and inconsistent. Maybe it was collected through a web form, a sensor, or a survey. Each of these origins shapes what the data can tell us, and what it can’t.
Consider planning a trip. You wouldn’t just jump in the car and start driving without knowing where you’re going. In the same way, we need to understand the landscape of our data before we can confidently navigate it.
When we understand how and why the data was collected, why it’s structured the way it is, and what it’s meant to ...