4 ms·

Hi! I'm the director of Georgia Tech's MS in Analytics program (both on-campus and online). GT's MS in Analytics degree is actually designed specifically for p

by jsokol1 10y ago

Hi! I'm the director of Georgia Tech's MS in Analytics program (both on-campus and online). GT's MS in Analytics degree is actually designed specifically for people who are going to go out and work in the analytics field -- it's not a pre-PhD degree, and our courses are targeted primarily at people who want to learn and apply analytics. We have an industry advisory board that helps us target course and program content, and we're constantly working to make sure our coursework is focused to the right cohort. We even have a required applied analytics practicum (both for on-campus and online students) where our students work on analytics projects for a wide range of companies and organizations. Perhaps other degrees are different, but the MS Analytics is a very practice-focused degree.

jsolson 10y ago
Fair enough, and I should have been a bit clearer in my original post. In my experience with the MSCS program (nearly ten years ago at this point) the core required classes were mostly well structured and would serve people well continuing onto a PhD or growing their skill set for industry. The core constituted a relatively small chunk of the overall credits required, though, and the elective courses tended to be more along the lines of what I described. I'm glad to hear that the Analytics program has a more dedicated focus on practical matters. It might be interesting to produce a series of similar (but narrower) curricula that amount to curated collections of CS classes making up degrees in Machine Learning, Systems Programming, etc. I personally really enjoyed my dartboard-oriented approach to class registration. I learned more than I've never needed to know about approximation algorithms, cryptographic theory, and compilers. Even if much of what I learned there hasn't proven itself directly useful yet, I really enjoyed learning it for learning's sake, and I think I'd have had a hard time picking up some of the gems I pulled out of that since. I also still have a hobby of proving problems NP-complete on demand as a bit of a parlor trick (within the limited scope of problems for which you can apply the small handful of patterns I've burned into my brain over the years :).
rememberlenny 10y ago
I'm very interested in this program. What is the best way to get in touch with you and get the syllabus material for the courses? I'm at rememberlenny at gmail.
blobbers 10y ago
I got into analytics while using the quant investment site Quantopian. Mostly you use python numpy and scipy to analyze a large time series data set (stock market) to predict pricing while having a low correlation to the overall market movement. I had some success and won their 6 month contest, but I still feel like a bit of a hack. I'd like to move into the financial quantitative analysis industry. Would you say this GT program would be a good stepping stone?
- nkozyra 10y ago
  In some ways. There's a class called ML For Trading that's very fun and like an intro to computational trading. The professor runs a company in that space.
treehau5 10y ago
I may be an educational purist, but to me I cringe when I hear universities boast about the "practicality" of their degrees they offer. You get a degree to prove you can learn. The courses should be heavy on theory and concepts. If you teach these well enough, ideally your students should be able to easily pick up whatever FOTM development stack or tool is out there and roll with it. I wish we could reverse this trend, but it just seems like it's too much good PR to say "hey everyone! come to our school and you are guaranteed to get a job!"
- crusso 10y ago
  I disagree. The role of a university CS degree is to bridge the gap between high school student and software development professional. That's going to include some theory but a lot of hands-on experience with modern development tools. It should include a healthy amount of group work and tons of coding projects. If you want to play around with theoretical computer science, get your PhD. College educations are too expensive to not be imminently practical.
- sf_rob 10y ago
  I disagree with this sentiment based on my own experience. I did great in my BS CS program from a highly ranked program, but was woefully underprepared for industry and quite frankly a bad software engineer. Graduates from traditional programs often leave with next to no experience with testing, version control, team structure/process, newer languages, frameworks/3rd party packages, etc, and my experience in industry is that it's a role of the dice if your company, team, etc are interested in teaching you or waiting for you to learn. The only people I know who graduated with those skills are people who either had amazing mentors or were natural hackers in their spare time. If I could re-design my education, it would be 2-3 years of theory and then 1-2 years of applied liberal arts education before starting an actual career.
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    Graduates from traditional programs often leave with next to no experience with testing, version control, team structure/process, newer languages, frameworks/3rd party packages, etc, and my experience in industry is that it's a role of the dice if your company, team, etc are interested in teaching you or waiting for you to learn. It's a waste of time to teach industry tools at a university. It's much more valuable to be taught fundamentals. Know your fundamentals well and any new tech will be much easier to learn. It's long-term thinking - put in the investment to make sure you can change skillsets in the future. All the things you mentioned tend to be ephemeral and change a lot within a few years. Look at the git monoculture that's sprung up in the last 5 years for example - 10 years ago it might have been reasonable to teach SVN.
asdfGUYasdfn 10y ago
"practicum" - wow, academics and the like sure have fancy names for things. poke
sysk 10y ago
Can professional experience and a partially completed bachelor's degree in SE substitute for the undergraduate degree requirement?
- barry-cotter 10y ago
  https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech/faq https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech/faq Who can apply to the OMS CS degree program? Admission into the OMS CS program will require a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from an accredited institution, or a related Bachelor of Science degree with a possible need to take and pass remedial courses. Georgia Tech will handle the degree admissions process. For more information please visit the Georgia Tech program page.
- jrumbut 10y ago
  I asked this question in a number of places a couple years ago and the answer is basically no. I did, however, find that my undergraduate university had a great program for people with nearly complete degrees who had been away for a few years. I'll be finishing undergrad this May and am now looking at grad schools. Feel free to contact me if you want to chat about this because it's been surprisingly hard to find info or advice in our situation.

by jsokol1 10y ago

jsolson 10y ago

Fair enough, and I should have been a bit clearer in my original post. In my experience with the MSCS program (nearly ten years ago at this point) the core required classes were mostly well structured and would serve people well continuing onto a PhD or growing their skill set for industry. The core constituted a relatively small chunk of the overall credits required, though, and the elective courses tended to be more along the lines of what I described. I'm glad to hear that the Analytics program has a more dedicated focus on practical matters. It might be interesting to produce a series of similar (but narrower) curricula that amount to curated collections of CS classes making up degrees in Machine Learning, Systems Programming, etc. I personally really enjoyed my dartboard-oriented approach to class registration. I learned more than I've never needed to know about approximation algorithms, cryptographic theory, and compilers. Even if much of what I learned there hasn't proven itself directly useful yet, I really enjoyed learning it for learning's sake, and I think I'd have had a hard time picking up some of the gems I pulled out of that since. I also still have a hobby of proving problems NP-complete on demand as a bit of a parlor trick (within the limited scope of problems for which you can apply the small handful of patterns I've burned into my brain over the years :).

rememberlenny 10y ago

I'm very interested in this program. What is the best way to get in touch with you and get the syllabus material for the courses? I'm at rememberlenny at gmail.

blobbers 10y ago

I got into analytics while using the quant investment site Quantopian. Mostly you use python numpy and scipy to analyze a large time series data set (stock market) to predict pricing while having a low correlation to the overall market movement. I had some success and won their 6 month contest, but I still feel like a bit of a hack. I'd like to move into the financial quantitative analysis industry. Would you say this GT program would be a good stepping stone?

nkozyra 10y ago
In some ways. There's a class called ML For Trading that's very fun and like an intro to computational trading. The professor runs a company in that space.

treehau5 10y ago

I may be an educational purist, but to me I cringe when I hear universities boast about the "practicality" of their degrees they offer. You get a degree to prove you can learn. The courses should be heavy on theory and concepts. If you teach these well enough, ideally your students should be able to easily pick up whatever FOTM development stack or tool is out there and roll with it. I wish we could reverse this trend, but it just seems like it's too much good PR to say "hey everyone! come to our school and you are guaranteed to get a job!"

crusso 10y ago
I disagree. The role of a university CS degree is to bridge the gap between high school student and software development professional. That's going to include some theory but a lot of hands-on experience with modern development tools. It should include a healthy amount of group work and tons of coding projects. If you want to play around with theoretical computer science, get your PhD. College educations are too expensive to not be imminently practical.
sf_rob 10y ago
I disagree with this sentiment based on my own experience. I did great in my BS CS program from a highly ranked program, but was woefully underprepared for industry and quite frankly a bad software engineer. Graduates from traditional programs often leave with next to no experience with testing, version control, team structure/process, newer languages, frameworks/3rd party packages, etc, and my experience in industry is that it's a role of the dice if your company, team, etc are interested in teaching you or waiting for you to learn. The only people I know who graduated with those skills are people who either had amazing mentors or were natural hackers in their spare time. If I could re-design my education, it would be 2-3 years of theory and then 1-2 years of applied liberal arts education before starting an actual career.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  Graduates from traditional programs often leave with next to no experience with testing, version control, team structure/process, newer languages, frameworks/3rd party packages, etc, and my experience in industry is that it's a role of the dice if your company, team, etc are interested in teaching you or waiting for you to learn. It's a waste of time to teach industry tools at a university. It's much more valuable to be taught fundamentals. Know your fundamentals well and any new tech will be much easier to learn. It's long-term thinking - put in the investment to make sure you can change skillsets in the future. All the things you mentioned tend to be ephemeral and change a lot within a few years. Look at the git monoculture that's sprung up in the last 5 years for example - 10 years ago it might have been reasonable to teach SVN.

asdfGUYasdfn 10y ago

"practicum" - wow, academics and the like sure have fancy names for things. poke

sysk 10y ago

Can professional experience and a partially completed bachelor's degree in SE substitute for the undergraduate degree requirement?

barry-cotter 10y ago
https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech/faq https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech/faq Who can apply to the OMS CS degree program? Admission into the OMS CS program will require a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from an accredited institution, or a related Bachelor of Science degree with a possible need to take and pass remedial courses. Georgia Tech will handle the degree admissions process. For more information please visit the Georgia Tech program page.
jrumbut 10y ago
I asked this question in a number of places a couple years ago and the answer is basically no. I did, however, find that my undergraduate university had a great program for people with nearly complete degrees who had been away for a few years. I'll be finishing undergrad this May and am now looking at grad schools. Feel free to contact me if you want to chat about this because it's been surprisingly hard to find info or advice in our situation.