The techniques we use to model and manipulate data guide the political, financial and social decisions that shape our modern society and are the basis of growth of the economy and success of businesses. Technology is growing and evolving at an incredible speed, and both the rate of growth of data we generate and the devices we use to process it can only increase. Data science is a growing and important field of study with a fast-growing number of jobs and opportunities within the private and public sector. The application of theory and methods to real-world problems and applications is at the core of data science, which aims especially to use and to exploit big data.