Data science is the study and practice of deriving intelligence from the vast stores of big data. It incorporates varying elements from mathematics, statistics, data engineering, pattern recognition, visualization, uncertainty modeling, data warehousing, and high performance computing with the goal of extracting meaning from data and creating data products.

Data science is a novel term that is often used interchangeably with competitive intelligence or business analytics, although it is becoming more common. Data science seeks to use all available and relevant data to effectively tell a story that can be easily understood by non-practitioners.

But making sense of data has a long history and has been discussed by scientists, statisticians, librarians, computer scientists and others for years. The following timeline traces the evolution of the term "Data Science" and its use, attempts to define it, and related terms.