Overview

Welcome back to this introductory course on data for data science. I’m Matthew Renze, data science consultant, author, and public speaker. In this module, we’ll learn about data types and how data are represented and stored in computer systems. How do we represent data in a computer? How does a computer know whether it’s dealing with a word, a number, or a date and time? And how does a computer know what types of operations can be performed on each type of data? To answer these questions, we’re going to learn about data types, and how we represent and store data in a computer. First, we’ll learn about data types, binary representations of data used by computer systems. Next, we’ll learn about scalar data types, representations of data that store a single value. Then, we’ll see about a few examples of common scalar data types you’ll encounter in data science. Next, we’ll learn about composite data types, representations that store data as a group of related values. Finally, we’ll see about a few examples of common composite data types you’ll encounter in data science.