Ciência de dados: por um currículo na área da informação

Abstract

Data is a reality today and all the processes in its life cycle tend to be recorded. At this threshold, a science has emerged that seeks to understand the production of data at different levels and in different contexts until it reaches its end-process. Popularized in Brazil since the 2000s, data science has been discussed in international literature since the 1960s. Born out of the intersection between statistics, computer science and mathematics, the field currently offers diverse professional training, strongly influenced by interdisciplinarity, and the area of information has been a great ally, especially the Information Schools, or simply ischools, which represent an international consortium of institutions focused on information with the motto of uniting people, information and technology. It is against this backdrop that we intend to discuss data science, its pathways and the process of training data scientists today. With the general aim of creating a curriculum in data science with an information bias in Brazil, we surveyed the subjects offered by six international ischools and four Brazilian public institutions, not accredited to the consortium, which offer or will offer training in data science. Classified in terms of its objectives as descriptive, exploratory, and qualitative and quantitative in terms of its technical procedures, the research, with documentary characteristics, looked at documents available on the institutions' websites and other typologies to find the following methodological paths to arrive at the construction of the curriculum with ischools philosophies: a) conducting a survey of national literature on ischools, exploring their characteristics, philosophy and impact on information science; b) surveying national literature on data science, identifying its connections with the field of information science; c) conducting an international survey of literature on data science and its connections with ischools; d) proposing an alternative Brazilian data science curriculum based on the philosophy of ischools and e) presenting the contribution of a pilot subject on data science, in a librarianship class, considering the philosophies of ischools. The results showed, through the curricula surveyed, that the core disciplines of the ischools surveyed are in the areas of programming, computing and data. The national institutions, on the other hand, focus on mathematics, statistics and programming. Unifying the results of the curricula found, the area of data, mathematics and computing stands out. Finally, it was concluded that the specific objectives proposed were achieved because, by surveying the literature and investigating the curricula, a curriculum was created with the ischool philosophy in data science. In addition, a subject was created for a librarianship class, taking into account important theoretical references for information science and data science, with applications and use of essential tools for both areas, such as database strategies and the use of Python and VOSviewer. Finally, it should be noted that, although there were gaps and challenges in the development of the research, it is important to follow the trends of ischools in the area of data science.