Sitting at the official launch of the Explore Data Science Academy (EDSA), housed within Woodstock’s hip Bandwidth Barn, there’s a tangible excitement in the air. It’s predominantly coming from the students scattered around the room – a group of 100 men and women, who were selected to be a part of the first, fully funded year-long data science training programme that will be taking place at the academy throughout 2018.

Data scientists officially hold the sexiest role of the 21st century. And what makes being able to interpret and extract meaning from data so sexy?