numbers are projected to rise even further in the coming years. according to seedscientific 2, at the dawn of 2020 the total amount of data in the world was around 44 zettabytes, tantamount to [UNK] bytes, which is the number of cells we could count in more than 1, 400 human beings. this astonishing amount of data can give us a better understanding of the state of the economy at both the micro and the macro level, provided that we able to extract the signal from the noise. as of january 2021. see https : / / seedscientific. com / how - much - data - is - created - every - day / banca d ’ italia has constantly striven to be at the cutting edge in developing software and hardware platforms, enabling big data analytics 3 for statistical and economic applications. the rise of data science started at the beginning of 2010 when high - quality models for image recognition were created, computational power achieved sufficient growth, and people in many scientific areas realized the full potential of such an approach. data science glues together machine learning and data processing. the former is a collection of tools, which allows us to learn from the given data and to extract patterns and interactions between series and values. the latter describes the possible set of actions in relation to the data itself : collection, manipulation, preparation, and visualization. it is important to flag a few differences between data science and the classical econometrics we study at university. unlike econometrics, which concentrates on solving non - linearity bias problems in a typical linear framework, data science is about improving our ability to work with non - linear relationships in the system. another difference is that econometrics concentrates on methods such as robustness, while machine learning algorithms became popular for their outstanding predictive performance 4. 3. data science at the bank of italy banca d ’ italia is organizing, along with the federal reserve board, the sveriges riksbank, the university of pennsylvania and the imperial college, a series of webinars on ‘ applied machine learning, economics, and data science ‘ ( amleds ) 5. the aim of these webinars is to foster the integration of data science tools into economics and policy - related issues and to promote closer cooperation on issues related to data science, big data and machine learning techniques applied to policy questions. such cooperation has intensified during the pandemic, leading to many important initiatives such

general economic policies in the union with a view to contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the union as laid down in article 3 of the treaty on european union ”, which include full employment. on the ranking of the escb ’ s objectives, see, however, perassi ( 2011 ), “ la banca centrale europea ”, published in enciclopedia del diritto, annali iv, giuffre editore, milan. bis central bankers ’ speeches it is interesting to note that the treaty endorsed the proposal that ricardo had formulated almost two centuries earlier, providing the legal basis for the three principles he developed. the institutional separation between the public powers of creating and spending money was established under article 128, which states that “ the european central bank shall have the exclusive right to authorize the issue of euro banknotes within the union. ” monetary funding of the state is prohibited by article 123 : “ overdraft facilities or any other type of credit facility … in favour of union institutions, bodies, offices or agencies, central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of member states shall be prohibited, as shall the purchase directly from them … of debt instruments. ” lastly, article 284 obliges the ecb to send an annual report to the european parliament, the council and the commission. 11 this reporting requirement, linked with a clear mandate, means that the monetary policy authority can be evaluated ex - post and is therefore accountable. so far we have looked at the regulations. what about the substance? a questionnaire was sent out at the end of the 1990s to a large number of central banks, which were asked what independence meant to them. some 80 per cent of the replies to this question mentioned the freedom of the central bank to choose the most suitable instruments for its objectives ; 12 in short, real operational independence. we should not be surprised : it has been said that the practice of central banking is more of an art than a science. 13 in the field of the natural sciences, specific operational instruments follow from quantitative analysis. monetary policy also makes use of models, but it cannot do without qualitative evaluations. paul samuelson said, “ i would rather have bob solow than an econometric model, but i ’ d rather have bob solow with an econometric model than bob solow without one. ” the statute of the escb and the ec