Prerequisite Skills

As an interdisciplinary program, the MSDS curriculum includes graduate courses taught by faculty across multiple disciplines relating to data science. Students need core skills across communication, computer science, and mathematics in order to succeed in these courses. Offers of admission will only be made to applicants who demonstrate strong competencies in these essential areas and skills.

Essential Math Skills:

• Partial differentiation 
• Multiple integration 
• Functions of several variables 
• Matrix operations 
• Linear systems of equations 
• Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors 

Essential Computer Science Skills:

• Basic complexity
• Object-oriented vs. procedural programming
• Data structures (lists, queues, stacks, trees)
• Algorithms (search and tree traversal)

 

We are updating details of how these skills are demonstrated in applications, please check back in September 2024 for more information.