I just left an interview where they asked me the same question. After reading the other 41 answers, I will try to adress a simple and more correct one: WHAT IS It is a little bit of a misnomer and a buzz word that media is using to describe everything. However, it’s good to have this dicussion to come into an agreement. The questions is about Data science. So I will not talk about Data Scientists. Go to What is a data scientist? if you are interested. The biggest error that I