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SPEAKER: There’s just so much data on so many different things
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– people riding subways, people in taxicabs, people taking Uber –
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which can be better optimized through data science.
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SPEAKER: Data science
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is a new academic discipline
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and professional discipline where the intersection of statistics,
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computer science and optimization, mathematics come together.
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MAYA ROTMENSCH: Data science gives you the opportunity…
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sort of understand how people make decisions
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maybe predict what future decisions they will make.
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And sort of help them make better decisions in the future.
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FOSTER PROVOST: And so just about any industry these days is
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starting to or have been using data science techniques.
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ROY LOWRANCE: In order for NYU to be effective
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as a research university,
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we need to be extremely good at data science.
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So this has meant setting up a research center,
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which is the Center for Data Science,
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and setting up a teaching center which offers two degrees.
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Right now, we’re offering the Master of Science
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and Data Science degree.
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And we will shortly offer a PhD in Data Science.
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Most master’s programs have a lot of required courses
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and a few electives.
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Our courses – six required courses and six electives.
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So the six required courses focus on making sure the students
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have the mathematical and programming background
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to read the literature.
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And the six elective courses are whatever the student wants to take.
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And what I do is I encourage students to take electives
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in wherever they want to work.
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FOSTER PROVOST: The students here have been very, very interested in
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actually thinking about applying the data science techniques
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to a variety of different topics.
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PETER LI: Everyone is like incredibly motivated
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and like really, really interested in data science.
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ROY LOWRANCE: What we do in our
teaching program is we teach students
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of why the methods work and how to implement them.
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And this positions students to actually custom design methods
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and turn around and implement them.
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DAVID HOGG: And so part of our mission here at data science
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is not just to do great data science
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and it’s not just to train great data scientists,
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but it’s also to change the way the university thinks about data.
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I think those…
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