Program in Data Science
By now, nearly everyone has heard of the term “big data,” the large, constantly changing, frequently unstructured data sets that modern technology has led to in every organization. Big data can be leveraged to gain insight into complex phenomena, make better predictions, and help organizations to run more effectively—but big data can also come with many challenges, including privacy, security, and the inherent complexity of processing and analyzing large quantities of data. Big data has spawned the emerging and growing field of Data Science and Analytics (DS&A), which combines statistical and computing methods to extract meaningful information from datasets which have a variety of sizes and formats.
DS&A has applications in many areas. For example, famously, by analyzing what people were querying, Google was able to predict a flu epidemic several weeks ahead of the CDC. Another well-known example is the use of these techniques to target certain groups of people in election campaigns. Recently, breast cancer oncologists announced the formation of a database that will contain anonymized information about every breast cancer tumor that has been genetically sequenced, including the treatment and outcomes. Oncologists will then be able to query it for patients with newly diagnosed tumors to select an optimal treatment approach.
The DS&A major at Simmons integrates learning from multiple foundational disciplines, including required courses in statistics, computer science, and mathematics; an application domain course; and a capstone experience.