Data science enables the use of theoretical, mathematical, computational and other practical methods to study and evaluate data. The key objective is to extract required or valuable information that may be used for multiple purposes, such as decision making, product development, trend analysis and forecasting. 

A data scientist is an individual that practices data science. Data science techniques include data mining, big data analysis, data extraction and data retrieval. Moreover, data science concepts and processes are derived from data engineering, statistics, programming, social engineering, data warehousing, machine learning and natural language processing, among others.