An introduction to data modeling

Consider a statement such as the weather depends on the season. If we wanted to confirm this statement with data, we would collect information about the weather during different times of the year. The statement is asserting a model – a model of the weather that says we can say something about the weather if we know the season. Proposing and evaluating models is data modeling.

Often, we would like to understand the relationships within our data (numbers and other types of information), and in the previous chapter, we used visualization methods for that. Here, we can go a little deeper and ask questions such as are the independent variables correlated with each other? or is the output a linear function of the input? In some cases, we can answer these questions with charts; in other cases, we may construct a mathematical model. A mathematical model is simply a function that transfers some input data into an output.

Data modeling, the topic...