Data Science Courses

Courses are offered on a Fall, Spring and Summer Semester schedule. The Fall and Spring Semester includes three concurrent courses. Each class is held once per week, for three hours. The Summer Semester has one course. It will take two years to complete the program.

MSDS 510 Computer Programming Foundations for Data Science

3 credit hours, Spring, Summer. Pre-requisite(s): None.

Introduction to computer programming for data science using Python, R, and SAS.

• Introduction to Python. Python syntax to write basic computer programs; Using the interpreter; Built-in and user-defined functions; Introduction to object-oriented programming in Python.
• Introduction to R. Simple graphing; R Basics: variables, strings, vectors; Data Structures: arrays, matrices, lists, dataframes; Programming Fundamentals: conditions and loops, functions, objects and classes, debugging.
• Introduction to SAS Programming. The SAS Operating Environment; SAS Programming Essentials: SAS Program Structure, SAS Program Syntax; Getting Data In and Out of SAS; Printing and Displaying Data; Introduction to SAS Graphics.

There are no pre-requisites for this course. Students are expected to have a working familiarity with the discipline of data science and analytics and general knowledge about the impacts of Big Data in businesses and corporations. All students should have a working knowledge of all aspects of Microsoft Office; and it goes without saying that they should be familiar with Internet access and usage.

MSDS 515 Data Conscientiousness

3 credit hours, Spring & Summer. Pre-requisite(s): None.

Using Excel, JavaScript, Python, SAS, SQL, and R to develop Data Conscientiousness: ability to immediately recognize the issues involved in data organization that will need to be addressed to tackle a specific problem. Developing skills in all of the preprocessing, scrubbing, cleaning tools (“search and rescue” operations), data imputation and handling of missing values, checking for adherence to data standards, and all of the rest of the time-consuming and dirty work of data projects. Linking structured and unstructured data sources and recognizing how to reshape data to get it into a computer-friendly format (i.e., rows and columns) required by analytical and statistical methods. A gentle introduction to statistics to enable understanding of the statistical difference between observations and variables, along with knowledge of the different scales of measurement so as not to end up with nonsensical analytical results.

There are no pre-requisites for this course. Students are expected to have a working familiarity with the discipline of data science and analytics and general knowledge about the impacts of Big Data in businesses and corporations. All students should have a working knowledge of all aspects of Microsoft Office; and it goes without saying that they should be familiar with Internet access and usage.

MSDS 520 Mathematical & Statistical Foundations for Data Science

3 credit hours, Fall, Spring. Pre-requisite(s): Undergraduate Calculus or Elementary Statistics.

Techniques for building and interpreting mathematical models of real-world phenomena in and across multiple disciplines, including linear algebra, discrete mathematics, probability, and calculus, with an emphasis on applications in data science and data engineering. Introduction to statistical methods that are used to solve data problems. Topics include sampling and experimental design, group comparisons, parametric statistical models, multivariate data visualization, multiple linear regression, and classification. Students will obtain hands on experience in implementing a range of commonly used statistical methods on numerous real-world datasets.

MSDS 525 Data Management Foundations for Data Science

3 credit hours, Spring & Summer. Pre-requisite(s): MSDS 510, 515.

The concepts and structures used to store, analyze, manage, and present (visualize) information and navigation using Python, SQL, SAS, and QGIS. Topics will include information analysis and organizational methods, and metadata concepts and applications. Students will be assisted to identify disparate data sources needed to perform analysis for a given real-world problem. Typically, data from a single source will not be adequate to perform the required analysis. Students will pull data from the disparate data sources and import it into SAS and use several SAS procedures to detect invalid data; format, validate, clean the data; and impute the data if it is missing. This will prepare the data for statistical analysis and decision modeling in SAS.

• Python Lists, Sets, Strings, Tuples, and Dictionaries; Reading and manipulating CSV files, and the Numpy library; Introduction to the abstraction of the Series, Pandas, and DataFrame as the central data structures for data analysis, along with tutorials on how to use functions such as Groupby, merge, and pivot tables effectively.
• Introduction to Databases and basic SQL; Using string patterns and ranges to search data and to sort and group data in result sets; Working with multiple tables in a relational database using join operations; Using Python to connect to databases and then create tables, load data, query data using SQL, and analyze data using Python.
• Introduction to Data Step in SAS; Processing Data in Groups; Manipulating Data with Functions; Data Extraction and Preparation, Concatenating, Merging and Interleaving Tables; Using SQL in SAS to query and join tables.
• Preparing comprehensive plans to manage spatial and non-spatial health-related data; building versioned enterprise databases; and knowing how to implement best practices for managing databases for health projects and organizations.

MSDS 530 Statistical Inference and Modeling

3 credit hours, Spring & Summer. Pre-requisite(s): MSDS 510, (MSDS 520 or MSBD 520).

Regression Models and Analysis of Variance (SAS, R). Confidence Interval; Parameter Estimation, Fitting Distributions; Testing Hypothesis, Goodness of Fit; Summarizing Data; Comparing Two Samples; ANOVA; Categorical Data; Least Squares Method.

MSDS 535 Further Mainstream Programming Languages for Data Science

3 credit hours, Fall, Spring. Pre-requisite(s): MSDS 525.

This course covers other useful mainstream programming languages for data science, beyond Python, R, SQL, and SAS. These “other” potential programming languages supplement the ability to crunch numbers and equip the data scientist with good all-round programming skills. Programming languages covered will vary depending on industry popularity. While some of the programming languages may not be covered in detail, examples include Java, Scala, Julia, MATLAB, JavaScript, TensorFlow, Go, Spark.