 Data science impacts nearly every academic discipline at Purdue. For this reason, the university adopted a campus-wide integrative data science initiative. In this segment, we'll find out what researchers mean when they say big data. From agriculture to biology, Purdue students in all majors are learning the importance of data science research, ethics, and education. Big data has transformed our entire society. We are creating new data about ourselves. So every click that we click on the internet, every transaction that we create, even as you move through geographic space with your cell phone, everything that you are doing in time now is quantified in some way as data. We are also creating so much more of it than we have ever created in history. When you aren't able to actually spend an entire lifetime looking at a single data set, you are relying on the computers to do the work for you. And that's what they mean when they say big data. It is a scientific research method that is being put on top of this existing ocean of information that we are creating. The integrative data science initiative has been developed in the past year at Purdue University so that when the students leave, they are these critical consumers and critical researchers of data within the relevant discipline that they're interested in. We are now as civil engineers having to have our students engage in these data science initiatives so that we're interfacing with some of these other partners that we weren't necessarily working with 10 or 15 years ago. For instance, an education major will need to be able to understand the data from the assessments that their students will undertake. Whereas, you know, a brain scientist will be working in an MRI lab and working with MRI data that comes off of the machine in order to be able to analyze and improve healthcare outcomes. And so at that point, then you have to bring in significant advances in machines, technologies, mathematical algorithms, statistics. The idea is to leverage their education in each of those disciplines and to make sure all of them are thinking critically about how they use that information and that data in order to make smart decisions. I'm Mark Daniel Ward. I'm a professor of statistics and I'm directing this new data mine initiative on campus. It's a way for students to learn about the data sciences while they're learning about their discipline. It's also a residential initiative where the students are all living together in Hillenbrand Hall, taking their seminars in the dormitory in the residence hall where they live. You see students interacting, not only working on homework but engaging on projects. Some kind of challenge, something that they need to accomplish with the data analysis. Their laptops open, connected to servers, working on data analysis, working in teams, you know, communicating and talking with each other about what they're working on. About 200 of the students at a time will have seminar at lunchtime or at dinnertime on a typical day in Hillenbrand. The professors come out to Hillenbrand Hall, have their office hours, the graduate students come out, they share meals together, they have the learning in the seminars there. Frequently we have alumni or companies come and visit our seminars too. We always have an open-door policy, we encourage people who are visiting Purdue University and they want to see what the data mine's all about to come meet the students, visit Hillenbrand Hall and see this new initiative that we're building. Data underpins everything at this point and thinking critically about what that means for yourself for your long-term outcomes is really what critical data literacy is and thinking about what data science means for yourself. Those skills are fundamental in order to succeed in society today so we would like to see those skills for everybody at the university and then we will also get you the level of skills that you need in order to succeed at your career and your professional goals with data science as well. Thou wrap up this edition of Boiler Bites. Remember that you can catch up on all our past stories at BoilerBites.com. See you next time.