A data scientist needs to create a model for predictive maintenance.

To perform efficient exploratory data analysis (EDA) on a large dataset for anomaly detection, using the First K option in SageMaker Data Wrangler is an optimal choice. This option allows the data scientist to select the first K rows, limiting the data loaded into memory, which conserves compute resources.

Given that the First K option allows the data scientist to determine K based on domain knowledge, this approach provides a representative sample without requiring extensive compute resources. Other options like randomized sampling may not provide data samples that are as useful for initial analysis in a time-series or sequential dataset context.