Informatics 248 - Intro to Data Science

The terms "data science" and "big data" appear in the news media and in everyday conversations. Moreover, we are told that we live in the "age of information", where almost every business venture and scientific research initiative collect a massive amount of data which may contain valuable information. This course is an introduction to the concepts and skills involved with the collection, management, analysis, and presentation of data sets and the data products that result from the work of data scientists. Privacy, algorithmic bias and ethical issues are discussed. Students will work with data from the financial, epidemiological, educational, and other domains. The course provides many case studies and examples of real-world data that students work with using various tools including the R programming language as well as the structured query language (SQL). This course does not satisfy requirements for the CS major.

Open to BDIC majors. COMPSCI 121, PSYCH 240+ w/ C PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE WITH A PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE (OTHER THAN COMPSCI 121) MAY BE CONSIDERED FOR OVERRIDE. BASIC MATHEMATICAL MATURITY (COLLEGE ALGEBRA) IS ASSUMED. BASIC PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS, SUCH AS ONE OF THE COURSES REQUIRED FOR REGISTRATION ON SPIRE IS REQUIRED. THIS COURSE CONSISTS OF TWO LECTURES AND ONE LAB SECTION PER WEEK. EACH LECTURE MEETING INCLUDES A PRESENTATION OF CONCEPTUAL MATERIAL AS WELL AS SOME TIME TO WORK ON IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MATERIAL PRESENTED. IN LAB TIME, STUDENTS RECEIVE DETAILED INSTRUCTION ON THE USE OF SOFTWARE TOOLS TO ANALYZE ACTUAL DATA SETS. READINGS WILL BE ASSIGNED AS PREPARATION FOR EACH CLASS MEETING. A PROJECT WILL BE ASSIGNED DURING THE COURSE. THE PROJECT PROVIDES STUDENTS WITH AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLORE THE TOPICS IN MORE DEPTH IN A SPECIALIZED DOMAIN. SOFTWARE: R AND R STUDIO, SQL-BASED APP, OTHER CURRENT SOFTWARE USED FOR STATISTICAL ANALYSIS (HTTPS://WWW.R-PROJECT.ORG/).STUDENTS NOT MEETING PREREQUISITES WHO ARE INTERESTED IN THE INFORMATICS PROGRAM (BDIC), MUST REQUEST OVERRIDES VIA THE ON-LINE FORM: https://www.cics.umass.edu/overrides.