BS Degree
The purpose of the program is to prepare students for technology-based careers in fields that require computer programming, data analysis, visualization, and a flexible, broad understanding of informatics. It is intended to appeal to students who want to learn technological and analysis tools used by today’s science, engineering, business, and government organizations.
The program is designed to provide students with first-rate skills and knowledge in computer science, mathematics, statistics, and a relevant substantive field of study with databases of exceedingly large size, so that students can learn statistical modeling and computer-based operations to index, store, extract, analyze, display, and interpret from those computerized databases. The growth in size of databases and the need to be able to “analyze and mine” them is one of the chief challenges for knowledge development and discovery in the 21st century.
Data Science is an interdisciplinary area that draws upon the traditionally distinct areas of computer science, applied mathematics and statistics, and applications from natural and social sciences, engineering, and business. Graduates from the BS program in Data Science will acquire the skills necessary to manage and analyze massive data sets. A Body of Knowledge for the subject is presented below:
Statistics
- Exploratory data analysis
- Stratified sampling
- Regression, linear models
- Goodness of fit of statistical models
- Analysis of variance
- Design of experiments
- Digital signal processing
Machine Learning (quantitative analysis)
General Programming Ability
- Java
- Python and pandas
- R
- Julia
- MATLAB/Octave, Maple, Mathematica
- MapReduce
- High Performance Computing
- Database: MySQL
- Unix/Linux commands
- LaTeX, Markdown
Data Communication
- Data visualization
- Web programming: HTML5, CSS, PHP, JavaScript
Calculation of the GPA in the Data Science Major
Students must have a minimum 2.000 cumulative grade point average (GPA) for all courses taken at the University in order to graduate. Students must also have a minimum 2.000 cumulative GPA in the major. For purposes of this computation:
- All required courses with a CIS, DSC, and MTH prefix count in calculating the GPA for the Data Science major.
- If a course is repeated, only the most recent course grade (whether higher or lower) shall be used to calculate the major cumulative GPA. Repeated courses are subject to the University’s course repeat policy.