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Four Types of Data Science Data

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About This MicroSim

This interactive infographic illustrates the four main types of data used in data science:

  1. Image Data - Photographs, medical scans, satellite imagery
  2. Sequence Data - Time series, text, audio, DNA sequences
  3. Tabular Data - Spreadsheets, databases, structured records
  4. Graph Data - Networks, relationships, social connections

Lesson Plan

Grade Level, Subject and Topic

9th-12th grade introductory data science. Understanding data types.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

  • Identify the four main types of data used in data science
  • Give examples of each data type from real-world applications
  • Explain which machine learning approaches work best with each data type

Activities

Data Type Classification

Present students with various datasets and have them classify which of the four data types they represent.

Real-World Examples

Research and present examples of how each data type is used in industry (medical imaging, natural language processing, database analytics, social network analysis).

References

  1. Types of Data in Data Science - Wikipedia - Overview of data types in computing
  2. p5.js Reference - p5.js Documentation - JavaScript library used to build this interactive simulation