MASTER IN DATA SCIENCE

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

PROFESSIONAL COURSES:

Financial Management
Principles, tools and techniques of financial analysis as well as acquisition/procurement of
funds and the effective uses, financial analysis ratio analysis, capital budgeting and cost of
capital will be discussed because of their relevance in financial decision making.

Project Planning and Management

This course examines project management roles and environments, the project life cycle and
various techniques of work planning and control and evaluation to achieve project objectives.
The tools currently available to project managers are discussed throughout this course. This
course will also serve as basis for the research project paper the student will be preparing as a
final requirement.

Organizational Behavior
This course deals with concepts of organization and models of human behavior at work. It deals
with human resources in various kinds of organization and the motivational factor that will let
them work in harmony. Presentation and analysis of job satisfaction employee
communications, power and politics in organization, quality of work and level of productivity
are extensively undertaken in theory and carefully blended with practice. Work ethics and
social responsibility are properly integrated in the course.

Marketing Management
This course deals with the major concepts and decision facing marketing practitioners and top
management. The conceptual and strategic underpinnings of marketing are presented and
discussed; the concepts and tools for analyzing markets and the marketing environment are
studied and applied, and the specific elements of the marketing mix and the administrative side
of marketing organization and control are identified and emphasized. Included in the course are
discussions on observed marketing phenomena and the presentation of case studies and
analysis.

TECHNICAL COURSES:

Research Methods
This course provides students with the essential knowledge needed to conduct scientific
research, to review the advantages and disadvantages of different research methods, and to
prepare students with the skills to develop a master research proposal in the field of data
science, which is a partial requirement for graduation from the program. Each student is
expected to apply the knowledge and skills learned from the course to develop their own
research proposal.
Introduction to Statistical Learning
This is an introductory-level course with a focus on regression and classification methods.
Topics include linear and polynomial regression, logistic regression and linear discriminant
analysis; cross-validation and the bootstrap, model selection and regularization methods (ridge
and lasso); nonlinear models, splines and generalized additive models; tree-based methods,
random forests and boosting; support-vector machines. Other methods included are principal
components and clustering (k-means and hierarchical).

Advanced Statistical Programming

It covers the methods and applications of some common statistical computing methods. Topics
include random number generation, permutation and bootstrap, optimization methods,
Expectation-Maximization (EM), Minorization-Maximization (MM), linear/quadratic
programming, hidden Markov model (HMM), and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). The
course covers the general theory and algorithmic procedures of several widely used statistical
models. It aims to develop the fluency in statistical programming skills of the learners. It puts
more emphasis on implementation instead of statistical theories. Students will gain
computational skills and practical experiences on simulations and statistical modeling.

Python Programming for Data Science

This course acts as an introduction to computer programming with the Python programming
language. The basics of imperative programming will be covered as well as selected areas of
computer science, object oriented programming and data structures. Computer programming
and problem solving shall be applied in the area of Data Science.

Introduction to Data Science

This course provides an overview of Data Science, covering a broad selection of key challenges
in and methodologies for working with big data. Topics to be covered include data collection,
integration, management, modeling, analysis, visualization, prediction and informed decision
making, as well as data security and data privacy. This introductory course is integrative across
the core disciplines of Data Science, including databases, data warehousing, statistics, data
mining, data visualization, high performance computing, cloud computing, and business
intelligence. Professional skills, such as communication, presentation, and storytelling with
data, will be fostered. Students will acquire a working knowledge of data science through
hands-on projects and case studies in a variety of business, engineering, social sciences, or life
sciences domains. Issues of ethics, leadership, and teamwork are highlighted.

Data Science for Real World Analytics

The course is about streamlining the thought process used by data scientists and utilizing
methodologies of data science to build real tools that could be applied in a number of
industries. By the end of the course, students will be able to collect, organize, and learn from
data generated in todays world and catalyze a new way of thinking about problem solving.
Capstone Project 1
Capstone focuses on addressing a real-world problem sourced from local partners in science,
government and industry. Students will identify a data science problem in a real-world setting
and develop the means to address it. A capstone proposal must be approved by the board of
panelists and the students adviser, before the student can register for more than three
capstone credits. The student must satisfactorily complete a written capstone proposal, and
present it to the Data Science faculty in a public presentation.

Capstone Project 2
Completion of approved capstone proposal and implementation of developed project are
expected to be realized. Final research and project output will be presented to the Data
Science faculty for final public presentation.