This document provides an overview of creating a data science lab using Microsoft and open source tools. It discusses what data science is, provides a brief history of its use in gambling and weather forecasting, and examines current applications in areas like social media, customer analysis, and predictive maintenance. The document advocates learning from nature by taking an evolutionary approach of variation and selection to complex problems. It then describes setting up an efficient lab for experimentation using tools like Power BI, SQL Server, and open source software R, and scaling solutions using technologies like Revolution Analytics, Hadoop, and cloud services.