Data science is the application of scientific methods and processes to extract useful information
or insights from large amounts of data. It is applicable in a wide range of fields and domains
because almost every industry is data-driven, which means they optimize their services and
products to meet the needs of their customers by collecting data from a large number of data
points. Today's science is interdisciplinary because it combines mathematics and statistics with
computer science and business knowledge, allowing it to tackle difficult application domains that
were previously out of reach due to data and computing power constraints. As a result, large
amounts of data must be stored and extracted to power business decisions or organizational
changes to improve efficiency, which can only be accomplished through interdisciplinary
collaboration. The operation of which can be explained first by gathering raw data from various
sources that explains the business problem. The data is then modeled using various statistical
analysis and machine learning approaches to determine the best business solutions. Finally,
actionable insights derived from data science will be used to solve business problems.
Several studies conducted over the last two decades claim that science is becoming more
interdisciplinary. The evidence, however, has been either anecdotal or circumstantial. An
examination of the evolution of interdisciplinarity across six research domains between 1975 and
2005. Computing well-established bibliometric indicators alongside a new interdisciplinarity
index and a science mapping visualization method can show how data science has evolved. My
research attests to significant changes in research practices over this 30-year period, including
significant increases in the number of cited disciplines and references per article, both of which
increased by approximately 50%, and co-authors per article, which increased by approximately
75%. The new interdisciplinarity index, on the other hand, only shows a modest increase, mostly
around 5%. According to science maps, the distribution of an article's citations remains primarily
within neighboring disciplinary areas. These findings suggest that science is becoming more
interdisciplinary, albeit in small steps, drawing primarily from adjacent fields and only modestly
expanding connections to distant cognitive areas.