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I am not really a newbie in statistics, but I ain't an expert either. I have always been wondering what exactly is the difference between Statistics and Data Science and for that matter, how is a statistician different from a data scientist? My understanding is that these are both interchangeable terms and that there aren't really any notable differences between them.

kjetil b halvorsen
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j1897
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    You should maybe add other tags, e.g. community-wiki or something similar. This is not a topic on computational-statistics. – Gumeo Nov 30 '15 at 10:28
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    Possible duplicate of [What can I read to give me a meta-view of statistics as a field](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/73281/what-can-i-read-to-give-me-a-meta-view-of-statistics-as-a-field) – Xi'an Nov 30 '15 at 10:39
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    Your understanding is basically correct. I'd say that data science is what statistics, conventionally framed, **should** be: statistics is not just about models and math but also about data collection and the challenges related to curating, cleaning, maintaining and storing a modern data set. Data science = statistics + database work + subject-matter knowledge. – Sycorax Nov 30 '15 at 13:10
  • See also [What characterises the difference between data science and statistics?](http://meta.datascience.stackexchange.com/q/86/3361). – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Nov 30 '15 at 13:29
  • https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-data-science-big-data-data-analytics-and-business-analytics – NNOX Apps May 11 '20 at 23:19

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Many people like to use this diagram to answer that question: http://drewconway.com/zia/2013/3/26/the-data-science-venn-diagram

BjaRule
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