Data Science

Overview

Data is being collected constantly, whether we realize it or not. “Big data” is more than numbers – it’s images, tweets, locations. New industries like digital humanities and computational social sciences are appearing at the intersection of traditional fields of quantitative study, and this major is training students to understand and support these emerging needs.A key component to the Data Science major from West Virginia University is its 12-hour focus area. Working with their academic advisers, Data Science students will take classes in a discipline related to their interests and career goals. Students can choose their area of emphasis among academic areas including the social sciences, humanities and sciences. Examples include astronomy, biology, criminology, geography, geology, GIS, physics, public health, psychology and sociology.Students with an interest in further specialization in statistics, math and/or computer science can add minors in those areas as well.

Program Learning Outcomes

• Students will communicate data science workflows in both written and oral forms.

• Students will demonstrate their ability to develop and use appropriate data science techniques to address ‘science’ (subject matter) topics and questions.

• Students will communicate the biases and other implications of the data and analysis.

• Students will prepare a clear and concise written project and orally present a data science workflow and analysis effectively and professionally.

• Students will understand and demonstrate the programming and technological aspects of a data science workflow

• Students will develop workflows using the languages and platforms common in data science practice (eg. R and Python, Rstudio and JupyterLab)

• Students will demonstrate their ability to acquire and manipulate data via a variety of platforms (eg. databases to cloud computing)