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New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow

ischool.berkeley.edu

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Re: New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow

#41

Post by anigbrowl »

JPKab wrote: post #33
geebee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a great degree program, and I'm encouraged to see it go on-line, but the $60K price tag seems over the top to me. Didn't Georgia Tech just announce an online MS for $7,000? I'm just not sure this makes sense. While tuition has gone way up at Berkeley, most science and engineering degrees are considered academic, rather than professional degrees, so the fees are considerably lower. http://registrar.berk…

You are being incredibly nice and understanding, and you shouldn't be. $60k for an online class is just plain robbery. I'm sick and tired of this bullshit that higher education has been ramming down our collective throats courtesy of a system in which easily available, seemingly infinite credit on the part of the students allows colleges to continuously seek out new revenue by burdening students with ever increasing…

I agree. I desperately want to go back to school (didn't attend college in my youth, and feel I am hitting the limits of self-education), but I'm not willing to put half the value of a house on a 4 year program.

Re: New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow

#42

Post by pjlegato »

anigbrowl wrote: post #41
JPKab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being incredibly nice and understanding, and you shouldn't be. $60k for an online class is just plain robbery. I'm sick and tired of this bullshit that higher education has been ramming down our collective throats courtesy of a system in which easily available, seemingly infinite credit on the part of the students allows colleges to continuously seek out new revenue by burdening students with ever increasing…

I agree. I desperately want to go back to school (didn't attend college in my youth, and feel I am hitting the limits of self-education), but I'm not willing to put half the value of a house on a 4 year program.

Half the value of a house? That's barely a down payment in the SF Bay area, where Berkeley is.

Re: New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow

#43

Post by graycat »

Here's a problem with something like data science:

First, the field is not professional like law, medicine, or even some parts of engineering. So, there's no licensing, board certification, recognized professional continuing education credits, professional job performance peer-review, legal liability, etc. Instead, you can just say that you have a Master's in data science and know some programming, database, statistics, etc.

Second, the degree isn't really a direct approach to business or entrepreneurship. So, the degree is aimed at making a person an employee. This means that somewhere there must be an employer including one ready to create a job, recruit someone for that job, and pay $120,000+ a year for the person.

Now, just who is going to create this job, e.g., put it in their budget and partly bet their career on it? And just why? I mean for what the program taught in programming, database, statistics, something else? And where will the real money actually come from, i.e., who with real P&L responsibility will actually cough up the $120,000 a year plus benefits, office space, travel, etc.? Or, let's think about the $120,000 a year: Ballpark, the full cost stands to be twice that, $240,000 a year. After two years on the job, maybe the person has actually delivered some value or is ready to start. So, the two years is $480,000. Heck, guys, even in Silicon Valley, that's a large seed round or a small Series A for a whole company and not just one employee slot!

I don't know but can ask: Are there some people at Berkeley smoking funny stuff?

Re: New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow

#44

Post by anigbrowl »

pjlegato wrote: post #42
anigbrowl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I desperately want to go back to school (didn't attend college in my youth, and feel I am hitting the limits of self-education), but I'm not willing to put half the value of a house on a 4 year program.

Half the value of a house? That's barely a down payment in the SF Bay area, where Berkeley is.

a) My house is a 10 minute bus ride from UC Berkeley, b) I am plenty familiar with house prices and down payments as it took us two years to find this one, and c) I was talking specifically about a 4-year degree, which is likely to cost more than $60k.

Re: New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow

#46

Post by achompas »

joncooper wrote: post #37
achompas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or how many in the field are extremely skeptical of any lessons an aspiring analyst could learn from it.

It seems that you know something about the field. Perhaps rather than offering snappy responses with negative tones, you could offer something constructive to the discussion? Say, what you think the skills required for day-to-day work as a data scientist are, and how you'd suggest someone develop them. Perhaps also what you think the best approach is to credentialing your learning--grooming a pedigree--if neither Kag…

Sure thing. Sorry for the previous terseness--I really really really hate this whole "Coursera --> Kaggle --> DS job at Facebook" meme when it (rarely) appears on HN, since it isn't even close to reality.

I'm not a data scientist, but I work with them very closely as an engineer and I've considered going down the same path. When I talk about data scientists, it's not a reference to any of the following:

> Engineers working with big data technology, like Hadoop, Storm, Kafka, who are essential but often uninvolved in model construction and evaluation.

> Analysts who develop models, then hand them off to engineers/IT to code them up (or keep them in Excel spreadsheets).

Instead, I'm thinking about someone with a specific background. They likely have a PhD, since that's an excellent way to experience the "ask-explore-code-test-present" workflow needed to answer an interesting question with real-world implications. The strong academic background is not necessary, but it greatly reduces friction during the research workflow (since you've spent 3-4 years in it). I'm getting a MS and working hard to make it as research-oriented as possible, fwiw.

This person also has a strong foundation in applied math. They might have worked on signal processing questions, applied algorithms for learning Bayesian network structure to proteins, or thought about the transition from Hopfield networks to RBNs or whatever awesome deep learning stuff is going on nowadays. A guy I respect described this quality as that of "a traveler," someone who can understand advanced work in a number of disciplines in addition to their specialty.

This person is an engineer. They learn languages easily, understand algorithmic complexity and think about the complexity of their models. They don't have to be Linus.

Finally, the person is forward-thinking. They understand that questions are motivated by business needs, and that answering these questions can have serious implications for the company or its partners. I should channel patio11 here!

Anyway I'm obviously very opinionated about this, but it's just one opinion. I'm happy to discuss this more with anyone who's interested, though--contact is in my profile.

Re: New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow

#47

Post by achompas »

jamo wrote: post #45

Do not, do not, do not pay $60,000 for this. If 'data science' sounds interesting, apply to a strong machine learning program.

This should be at the top of this thread. Save the $60k for a MS or PhD in machine learning, applied math, or information systems at a graduate program. Don't do this.

Re: New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow

#49

Post by bernardom »

fixxer wrote: post #22
bernardom wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with regarding an M.Eng as a 5th year of University, though it's a year of actual major-related courses rather than Engineering core classes. That's in fact how I decided to do one: my professor pointed out that it was not one year on top of four, but one on top of one. I got to take another year of electives that were applicable to my career, rather than the core classes (chemistry, etc) that I was required…

Cornell? What year? EDIT: I did mine at CU back in 2003 in applied, not FE. I had many friends in FE, most all went into credit. I worked in trading for six years before quitting for a PhD. I do not place any value on an FE degree; looking back at the curriculum they offered, it is obvious that they were thinking the wrong way (the credit models they were teaching were complete shit and they had no concept of micro-s…

B.S.'08, M.Eng '09

Henderson is one of my favorites; I just went back for my 5-year and he was just so wonderful to talk to.

The FE curriculum never really interested me; I took OR methods in FE as an undergrad and the professor (a surfer-dude postdoc from UCLA, Will Anderson) convinced me that the efficient market hypothesis was mostly right.

After that, FE seemed a little... well, in the words of my classmate Ryan, "like looking at the surface of the waves to see if there are whales humping."

Re: New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow

#50

Post by xiaoma »

achompas wrote: post #36
727374 wrote: post #11

Alternatively: 1. Take Coursera's excellent Intro to Data Science for free 2. Spend time doing Kaggle competitions and learning along the way 3. Profit

This is a recipe to get very good at basic analysis. It won't prepare you for the day-to-day responsibilities of a data scientist, though.

What do you feel would needed to be added to the mix in order to prepare a person for the day-to-day responsibilities of a data scientist? Also which of those responsibilities do you see as most challenging?
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