Describing the world with data

Start with a simple question: What is data? Data is the recorded description or measurements of something in the real world. A real-world object or event is a unit of observation. For example, an exam participation of one student is a unit of observation. Data is used to describe observations. In the case of these grades, a list of exam grades is data; that is, exam grades are a measure of the performance of students in exams.As you can imagine, there is a lot of data you can gather to describe a person. For a student, that can include their age, height, courses registered, exam grades, and more. One or more of these measurements used to describe a specific unit of observation is called a data point, and each measurement in a data point is called a variable (also referred to as a feature). When you have several data points together, you have a dataset. For example, you may have Student A, who is a 19-year-old male, and Student B, who is a 22-year-old female...