Data science is a term that is being heard in every nook and corner of the technical world for the past few years. Every major company (product-based/ service based) is in a dire need of data scientists, but what exactly is it?
Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses computer sciences, modeling, statistics, analytics, and math skills combined with business sense to organize analyze, process, and visualize data. As of 2020, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created by humans every single day, and the person who works with this kind of raw data is called a data scientist.
I’m currently pursuing my 3rd year of Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering (Hons.) at Lovely Professional University. Like every other CSE student, I was given a chance to pursue an engineering minor from a selected pool of extremely useful and industry demanded specializations and I chose Data Science.
Data Science minor at LPU is divided into 4 courses,
- Introduction to Data Management
- Data Science Toolbox: R Programming
- Data Visualization
- Predictive Analysis
Each of these will be taught in semesters 5, 6, 7 & 8 respectively.
All the courses in this minor are completely practical with 4 classes conducted every week. Hands-on practice of the concepts is given great emphasis, so, every student is required to bring their device to the BYOD classes to personalize their experience towards the subject.
The total seats for this minor are 700, and the selection criterion is CGPA. It is advised to keep your CGPA greater than 7.5/10 to have a fair chance to be selected for this minor.
My instructor for Introduction to Data management was Komal Arora, Assistant professor at LPU and her classes were a delight to attend and understand. I have also taken the benefits of online courses by completing Data Science Specializations by Johns Hopkins University and IBM offered through Coursera, doing a couple of Data Science projects in the process.
Coming to placement opportunities, Data Science students have various opportunities, as they can be hired as
- Data Scientist
- Data Architect
- Data Administrator
- Data Analyst
- Business Analyst
- Data/Analytics Manager
- Business Intelligence Manager
Data Science is widely used in industries for Targeted Advertising and re-targeting, Recommender Systems, Image Recognition, Speech Recognition, Gaming, Price Comparison Websites, Airline Route Planning, Fraud and Risk Detection and Self Driving Cars.
LPU allows students to attend placement drives by leading product-based companies like Amazon and Microsoft.
For more details visit: https://www.lpu.in/programmes/engineering/b-tech-cse-with-specialization-in-data-science
