Data science is a broad, diverse field of study and it would be impossible to explore exhaustively within this book. We hope to provide a solid understanding of important data science concepts and equip the reader for further study. In particular, this book will provide concrete examples of different techniques for all stages of data science related inquiries. This ranges from data acquisition and cleaning to detailed statistical analysis.

So let's start with a discussion of data acquisition and how Java supports it as illustrated in the next chapter.