Data Science

Unique Features

Program Objectives

• Data Management: Ability to effectively utilize integrated databases for managing large-scale datasets.
• Machine Learning: Ability to effectively apply an appropriate machine-learning model to a problem.
• Analysis and Visualization: Ability to effectively communicate insights derived from data.

An MSDS degree enables you to collect data from numerous sources (databases, files, images) and integrate them into a form in which the data is fit for analysis. Students develop strong programming and analysis skills to explore data, produce summary statistics, perform statistical analyses; using standard data mining and machine-learning models for effective analysis. Students learn to work with both structure and unstructured data. The program provides you with the knowledge to manage, process, analyze, and visualize data at scale. You will learn about the limitations of machine learning and data mining methods as applied to real-world problems and communicate the advantages/disadvantages of the methods to non-data experts. Students will carry out the full data analysis workflow, including unsupervised class discovery, supervised class comparison, and supervised class prediction. They will learn how to properly summarize, interpret, and communicate the analysis of results. In this program you will develop methods for modeling, analyzing, and reasoning about data arising in one or more application domains such as social science, health informatics, web and social media, climate informatics, urban informatics, geographical information systems, business analytics, bioinformatics, complex networks, public health, and game design.

Career Outlook

Students who successfully complete their master's in data science are qualified to seek jobs as:

• Data scientist
• Machine learning engineer
• Applications architect
• Enterprise architect
• Data architect
• Infrastructure architect
• Data engineer
• Business intelligence developer
• Data analyst

Employees with data science expertise are sought out in every industry, not just in technology. "Data scientists are highly educated—88 percent have at least a master's degree and 46 percent have PhDs—and while there are notable exceptions, a very strong educational background is usually required to develop the depth of knowledge necessary to be a data scientist," reports KDnuggets, a leading site on Big Data.