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Abstract:
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Many data science undergraduate degrees look like statistics majors with computer science minors or, the reverse. Alternatively, analytics degrees have often found a home in business schools. A third type of degree is discussed in this talk. A Bachelor of Arts degree in Data Analytics was created at Miami University, designed for students without a traditional Calculus-based mathematics background. We target students who wish to work with data in specific applications. The major is built around a set of six “core” courses and students complete the degree in a “concentration” of their choice: bioinformatics, geospatial analytics, social analytics and sports analytics with digital humanities in current development. After a quick overview of the degree, we discuss the introductory programming course, which only requires an introductory statistics course as a prerequisite. The class is part of the common foundation for the program, and it covers programming concepts in both R and Python while sprinkling in applications relatable to all the concentrations. We will cover the lessons learned teaching such a course to an academically diverse group of students.
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