What is Data Science and how does it differ from traditional analytics?

Data Science is an interdisciplinary field that combines statistics, programming, and domain expertise to extract insights from structured and unstructured data.\n\n• Traditional Analytics: Descriptive, uses historical data, answers "what happened"\n• Data Science: Predictive and prescriptive, uses ML algorithms, answers "what will happen" and "what should we do"\n• Tools: Python/R, machine learning, big data technologies\n• Process: Data collection → cleaning → analysis → modeling → deployment\n\nExample: Traditional analytics shows last quarter sales dropped 15%. Data science predicts next quarter trends, identifies customer segments likely to churn, and recommends targeted retention strategies.