DePaul University To Offer Degree In Predictive Analysis
itwbennett writes "The Chicago-based DePaul University will offer what it says is the nation's first master's degree in predictive analysis, the school announced on Wednesday in conjunction with IBM, which will provide resources for the program. 'We realized there was a need to create a program that prepared students in careers in data analytics and business intelligence,' said Raffaella Settimi, an associate professor at DePaul's College of Computing and Digital Media, who helped craft the program. 'A lot of the professionals who work in these fields have a variety of backgrounds, but there really isn't a program dedicated to data analytics,' Settimi said."
There are, however, many quality degree programs in Statistics. As someone who went through one of them, you can largely choose your own mix of theory and practice. I wonder if this isn't just statistics rebranded? I hope it doesn't concentrate too much on certain proprietary software packages. Statistics is like anything else. You can easily produce a bunch of numbers and compile massive books of tables and graphics. But if you don't know the assumptions of each of your methods, and consequently their shortcomings in each situation, you can draw some fairly bad conclusions rather quickly. I just hope this program gives a solid background in theoretical statistical inference, experimental design, and regression analysis, so students understand the 'why'.