Page 318 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 4

STS637 Ronald W. J.
to develop methods and tools for needs identification and assessment of “Big
Data” competencies in National Statistical Systems (NSSs); to build a
competency framework for Big Data acquisition and processing in the current
data landscape; and to identify the existing supply of training of data scientists
in academic and research centers. The members of the task team include
national and regional statistical offices, development banks and some
institutes with specific focus on Data Science, notably the Data Science
Campus of the Office of National Statistics (ONS) of the United Kingdom.
The goals of ONS’s Data Science Campus are to investigate the use of
6
new data sources, including administrative data and big data for public good
and to help build data science capability for the benefit of the UK. A new
generation of tools and technologies is being used to exploit the growth and
availability of these new data sources and innovative methods to provide rich
informed measurement and analyses on the economy, the global environment
and wider society. The mission of the ONS Data Science Campus is to work at
the frontier of data science and Artificial Intelligence – building skills and
applying tools, methods and practices – to create new understanding and
improve decision-making for public good. It defines data science as “applying
the tools, methods and practices of the digital and data age to create new
understanding and improve decision-making”.

3. Data science for official statistics
Data science is a concept to unify statistics, data analysis, machine learning
and their related methods in order to understand and analyse actual
phenomena. Figure 1 illustrates how Data Science can be seen to sit at the
intersection of mathematics, statistics, computer science, machine learning,
traditional research and domain expertise. This Venn-diagram is adapted from
7
original work of Drew Conway . We will describe two examples of projects,
which use Data Science to model and estimate statistics for government
purposes.

Figure 1: Data Science at the intersection of multiple disciplines

6 See https://datasciencecampus.ons.gov.uk/about-us/
7 See for example http://drewconway.com/zia/2013/3/26/the-data-science-venn-diagram
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