From Library Connect
Interview with AnnaLee Saxenian, Dean, UC Berkeley School of Information
In 2014, the University of California, Berkeley School of Information launched its Master of Information and Data Science (MIDS) program. The multidisciplinary curriculum was designed to be completed in 20 months via live online classes ranging from Applied Machine Learning to Field Experiments....We are educating people who can work with data, starting with asking good questions and understanding research design. They need to be able to find and pull together data in a form that makes it usable, store it in databases, and then apply either statistical tools or some of the new computational tools to analyze it. They will have to clearly communicate the story that the data tells to nonspecialists using words or visualizations. And they should be aware of the privacy and ethical issues associated with using data....
We envision the field of data science as a bell curve. At one end are the PhD statisticians, computer scientists and physicists who are on the leading edge creating new algorithms. LinkedIn, Google and other technology companies are hiring these types of PhD data scientists or computer science graduates. At the other end are data analysts doing the simpler tasks. We are preparing our students for the big bell in the middle, which might include healthcare, finance and any number of other industries. Many of our students are not looking to change careers, but rather to rise within their existing organizations....