Undergraduate Specializations in Data Science
Data Science is one of the fastest growing fields today. Employment trends show an extremely high demand for graduates with this specialization. The McKinsey Global Institute's "Big Data" report states, "By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skill as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions."
Organizations of all types and sizes need smart, creative people with the right computational and statistical skills to build systems that can generate meaningful insights from massive amounts of data. As Forbes has stated, "[V]irtually everything most businesses do involves some element of electronic data capture. As a result, there are warehouses full of data that hold potential value for making better decisions. What's missing is a workforce that knows what to do with it."
Our undergraduate specialization in Data Science is designed to give you essential foundations in scalable computation, data mining, statistics, and business concepts that you need to be successful in our data-driven world.
This specialization can be combined with either the BS in Computer Science or the BS in Computer Information Systems.
Four courses are required for the Specialization in Data Science:
- CS 451 Intro to Distributed Computing (CS 495 in Fall 2012)
- CS 442 Data Mining or CS 584 Machine Learning
- MATH 481 Introduction to Stochastic Processes or MATH 483 Design and Analysis of Experiments
- BUS 371 Strategies for Reaching New Markets
The Specialization in Data Science is offered as part of Data Science @ IIT.
To declare a specialization, request an official academic audit from Undergraduate Academic Affairs (enter Data Science in the Specialization box). For more information about undergraduate specializations, see here.