Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, structured, or unstructured data.

Data science also integrates domain knowledge from the underlying application domain (e.g., natural sciences, information technology, and medicine). Data science is multifaceted and can be described as a science, a research paradigm, a research method, a discipline, a workflow, and a profession.

Data science is "a concept to unify statistics, data analysis, informatics, and their related methods" to "understand and analyze actual phenomena" with data. It uses techniques and theories drawn from many fields within the context of mathematics, statistics, computer science, information science, and domain knowledge. However, data science is different from computer science and information science. Turing Award winner Jim Gray imagined data science as a "fourth paradigm" of science (empirical, theoretical, computational, and now data-driven) and asserted that "everything about science is changing because of the impact of information technology" and the data deluge.

A data scientist is a professional who creates programming code and combines it with statistical knowledge to summarize data.

Data science is an interdisciplinary field focused on extracting knowledge from typically large data sets and applying the knowledge from that data to solve problems in other application domains. The field encompasses preparing data for analysis, formulating data science problems, analyzing data, and summarizing these findings. As such, it incorporates skills from computer science, mathematics, data visualization, graphic design, communication, and business.

Vasant Dhar writes that statistics emphasizes quantitative data and description. In contrast, data science deals with quantitative and qualitative data (e.g., from images, text, sensors, transactions, customer information, etc.) and emphasizes prediction and action. Andrew Gelman of Columbia University has described statistics as a non-essential part of data science. Stanford professor David Donoho writes that data science is not distinguished from statistics by the size of datasets or use of computing and that many graduate programs misleadingly advertise their analytics and statistics training as the essence of a data-science program. He describes data science as an applied field growing out of traditional statistics.

In 1962, John Tukey described a field he called "data analysis", which resembles modern data science. In 1985, in a lecture given to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, C. F. Jeff Wu used the term "data science" for the first time as an alternative name for statistics. Later, attendees at a 1992 statistics symposium at the University of Montpellier  II acknowledged the emergence of a new discipline focused on data of various origins and forms, combining established concepts and principles of statistics and data analysis with computing.

The term "data science" has been traced back to 1974, when Peter Naur proposed it as an alternative name to computer science. In his 1974 book Concise Survey of Computer Methods, Peter Naur proposed using the term ‘data science’ rather than ‘computer science’ to reflect the growing emphasis on data-driven methods In 1996, the International Federation of Classification Societies became the first conference to specifically feature data science as a topic. However, the definition was still in flux. After the 1985 lecture at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, in 1997 C. F. Jeff Wu again suggested that statistics should be renamed data science. He reasoned that a new name would help statistics shed inaccurate stereotypes, such as being synonymous with accounting or limited to describing data. In 1998, Hayashi Chikio argued for data science as a new, interdisciplinary concept, with three aspects: data design, collection, and analysis.