Overview
Mark McKinzie (Mathematics), Chair
The minor in data analytics is an interdisciplinary program of study that incorporates statistics, computing and programming, data skills, and a problem-solving approach to data analysis. Required coursework instills the basic competencies expected of data scientists, including how to clean and explore data, work with databases, and build predictive models. The data science student is equipped with a set of statistical and methodological tools for drawing insights from real data and applying those insights to make decisions in various fields.
The choice of two interdisciplinary electives, which links the data analytics minor with the students' major field(s), provides the disciplinary element needed for doing data science. One of the required courses - STAT 375 - incorporates a data science project in which found data is analyzed and guided by disciplinary questions of interest, thus providing students with a mini-capstone experience.