Data Science Program

What is Data Science?

Data Science sits at the intersection of mathematics and computer science and is applied to a boundless set of disciplines – including health, physical sciences, business, environmental studies, sociology, and political science.

Data Scientists collect, synthesize, and analyze big data to drive scientific discovery and business opportunities. Data Scientists are skilled in programming languages like R and Python and leverage advanced knowledge in statistics, machine learning, and data visualization to meet the demands of modern business and science.

Who Hires Data Scientists?

In short… everyone! Companies in almost every business sector imaginable recognize the need to leverage data to predict trends, inform decisions, and make breakthroughs. Data Scientists are employed by hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, financial and trading firms, sports teams, marketing agencies, and of course tech companies.

Data Scientists entering the job market with skills in programming, statistics, machine learning, and data visualization have their pick of high paying, high quality jobs at some of the most prestigious and exciting companies in the country.

• Average annual salary for data analysts: $59,732/year (source)
• Average annual salary for data scientists: $95,998/year (source)
• Job outlook: from 2013 to 2018, the number of data science job postings grew by 256% (source)
• Data scientist job: #1 in list of best 50 jobs in America (source)

The LinkedIn August 2018 workforce report found a 150,000+ labor shortage for Data Scientists, with particularly elevated demand in NJ/NY, SF, and LA metro areas. Glassdoor ranked Data Scientist as the #1 job in America in 2019, with a median base salary of 108K/year, and has been ranked the #1 best paying job out of college in 2019. Pricewaterhouse Coopers has estimated that 27% of employers are looking for a Master’s degree when filling Data Science positions. That same study identifies New Jersey and New York as the #1 region in terms of number of job postings.

Want to see who is hiring Data Scientists now? Take a look at the following job boards that focus on data science jobs:

• AnalyticTalent.com
• DataJobs.com
• Kaggle
• KDnuggets
• icrunchdata

Learn more about Ramapo’s undergraduate and graduate programs in Data Science.

Data Science News

April 21, 2021MSDS Students at Scholars Week - College Football Recruiting Using Machine Learning Techniques

Colette Barca, Keith Osani, Nisha Srishan, and William “Brady” Wulster are inaugural members of the Master’s in Data Science program. During their MATH 570 Applied Statistics course with Professor Osei Tweneboah, they designed and completed a research project to predict high school football recruits’ college commitments using several Machine Learning techniques. The four designed their project with the understanding that college football is big business. To create a winning team that will continue to generate revenue, Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Power Five schools need to choose their recruits wisely. Recruits are selected based on certain player attributes. Power ... Read More

January 21, 2021From Data Ethics to Data Justice: The Challenge of Building Better Worlds through Data Science

Dr. Andrea Pitts, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte will be describing this new new branch of study within applied ethics, a subfield in professional ethics that includes areas of research and practice such as computing ethics, media ethics, and biomedical ethics. This new branch of applied ethics responds, specifically, to novel applications and technologies for data storage, maintenance, and processing that add new layers to the study of morally relevant considerations within information ethics, business ethics, and AI ethics, for example. Read More

August 22, 2020Convolutional Neural Networks for Face Recognition

We are happy to announce that Dr. Ausif Mahmood has rescheduled his talk on Convolutional Neural Networks this fall virtually. Dr. Mahmood is the Director of The School of Engineering at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, CT. His research areas involve Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning - bridging ties between Computer Science and Data Science. Please join us virtually on September 17th at 1:00pm - 2:00pm. Registration is required, registrants will receive web conferencing information a few days prior to the event. You'll also have the opportunity to learn more about Ramapo's new Data Science ... Read More

August 6, 2020MSDS - Fall 2020 Course Delivery Update

As we look forward to the start of our Fall 2020 semester, we wanted to share with you our plans for course delivery starting in September. As you hopefully know, Ramapo College is required to adhere with the State of New Jersey’s phased reopening plan. This plan identifies which activities and classes colleges and universities may conduct on campus, and the precautions we must take. Based on current public health conditions as of August 3rd, NJ is currently still in Phase 2 - which prohibits on-campus meetings for all courses other than laboratory (i.e. biology labs) and studio (i.e. theatre) ... Read More

April 25, 2020MSDS Fall course delivery options related to COVID-19

With uncertainty surrounding the upcoming Fall semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we want you to know our contingency plans in case of disruption. All MSDS courses for the Fall 2020 semester are scheduled to be delivered as hybrid courses. This means a large portion of course content will be delivered online, however the course will meet once a week on campus. We’ve scheduled all three MSDS courses to meet on Thursday evenings. There are two scenarios that could alter these plans: Ramapo College converts the Fall 2020 semester to online-only / remote delivery. In the unlikely event this happens, ... Read More

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RCNJ Data Science Contacts