What is data science?
Data Science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods and algorithms to extract information and insights from diverse data types. It combines domain expertise, programming skills and knowledge of mathematics and statistics to solve analytically complex problems.
Statistics Canada is one of the leaders in the Government of Canada's adoption of data science and artificial intelligence. By taking a collaborative approach to data science, the agency is pushing the boundaries of modernization and harnessing the power of new approaches and technologies to better serve Canadians.
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is a field of computer science dedicated to solving cognitive problems commonly associated with human intelligence such as learning, problem solving, visual perception and speech and pattern recognition.
Data science supporting the COVID-19 response
Data science allows statistical agencies to respond quickly to changing economic and social situations. Statistics Canada is using the power of data science to support the COVID-19 response in Canada.
The agency collaborated with Health Canada to visualize the supply and demand information for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Before the data visualization could begin, the data needed to be extracted and ingested. The data were coming daily from many different sources (different provincial/territorial governments, other federal departments and private sector companies that had been hired to help source the PPE) and in many different formats (e.g. Word documents, Excel files, PDFs) and required a significant amount of manual work to create standardized reports.
To improve this process, data scientists at Statistics Canada created an algorithm that parses the data into different data entries. Machine learning was used to identify numbers and dates within the text. The structured data were then presented in a PowerBI dashboard that was shared with other government departments to meet their information needs and better understand the supply and demand for PPE in Canada.
For more information on Statistics Canada's response to COVID-19, visit COVID-19: A data perspective portal.