Dive Summary:
- As the big data industry begins to bloom, schools like Columbia University, which launched its Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering last year, are rolling out data science programs to meet student and employer needs.
- According to a forecast by the McKinsey Global Institute, there will be an estimated 500,000 data positions in five years with only 310,000 qualified workers to fill them; universities will need to increase output of data science graduates by as much as 60% to meet the rising need.
- Chris Wiggins, a professor of applied mathematics and applied physics at Columbia who is on the education committee for the Institute for Data Science and Engineering, noted that "this is a generation of kids that grew up with data science around them — Netflix telling them what movies they should watch, Amazon telling them what books they should read — so this is an academic interest with real-world applications. And they know it will make them employable.”
From the article:
"... Harvard Business Review calls data science 'the sexiest job in the 21st century,' and by most accounts this hot new field promises to revolutionize industries from business to government, health care to academia.
The field has been spawned by the enormous amounts of data that modern technologies create — be it the online behavior of Facebook users, tissue samples of cancer patients, purchasing habits of grocery shoppers or crime statistics of cities. Data scientists are the magicians of the Big Data era. They crunch the data, use mathematical models to analyze it and create narratives or visualizations to explain it, then suggest how to use the information to make decisions. ..."
