本课程作为数据科学的先导课和认知类课程，致力于以形象生动的教学模式为学生普及数据挖掘、大数据相关的基础知识、核心概念和思维模式，从工程技术、法律规范、应用实践等不同角度描绘数据科学的美好蓝图。该课程适合于不同背景对数据科学这个迷人的领域感兴趣的大学生。现有的在线数据科学课程主要侧重于学习特定的算法等纯技术内容。相比之下，数据科学是一个面向应用、高度跨学科的领域，需要来自多个领域的系统知识。除了算法学习，学生还需要认识到现实世界中人们可能面临的挑战，以及数据与人类社会的关系。本课程的目的是全面了解大数据时代的关键问题，提高数据意识，帮助学生为后续的数据科学课程打下坚实的基础。

This is an introductory course suitable for university students with diverse backgrounds interested in getting into the fascinating world of data science. Existing online data science courses mainly focus on learning specific algorithms and other purely technical contents. By contrast, data science is an application-oriented, highly interdisciplinary domain, which requires systematic knowledge from a variety of sources. In addition to algorithm learning, students also need to appreciate the challenges that people may face in the real world as well as the relationship between data and human society. The purpose of this course is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the key issues in the era of big data and promote data awareness to help students lay a solid foundation for subsequent data science courses.