Data science as envisioned by the Waseda University Center for Data Science
Data science: "The scientific method for data-based decision-making"
It can be said that we make decisions every day, from relatively large issues such as a company's business strategy to small everyday matters such as choosing a route when traveling.
We believe that "data science" is an academic discipline that uses data-based scientific methods to support these various decision-making processes.
Why Data Science Now?
"Easy data acquisition and improved analysis techniques"
In recent years, advances in information and communication technology have made it possible to collect and acquire a wide variety of large amounts of data, including not only numerical values but also text, images, audio, etc. Furthermore, improvements in computing power and developments in analytical theory and technology have made it possible to analyze such collected data in a realistic amount of time.
These two changes have made it possible to use data to make decisions in a much wider range of academic fields and in real-world decision-making problems than ever before.
Data Science Education at Waseda University
"Creating new knowledge through undergraduate specialized fields and data science"
Waseda University is a private comprehensive university with a wide range of academic fields, including 13 undergraduate schools, 17 graduate schools, and 4 professional graduate schools, and data science is already being used in many academic fields.
While research that contributes to the development of the academic discipline of data science itself is important, Waseda University has a diverse range of academic fields, and we believe that creating new knowledge by applying data science knowledge to the specialized fields of our faculty and students is also an important part of our mission.
From this position, Center for Data Science works in cooperation with the Global Education Center to provide a "Data Science Education Program" for all faculties and graduate schools.
Characteristics of Data Science Education Program
"You can learn data science systematically from a unified perspective"
The aim of this program is to enable students from a variety of academic fields, including humanities and social sciences, science and engineering, and mathematical backgrounds to utilize their knowledge of data science in their own academic fields.
The most important feature of this program is that it organizes methods that have been developed individually in fields such as statistics and machine learning from the perspective of decision-making purposes, making it a program that allows students to learn data science systematically from a unified perspective.
This will allow you to clearly learn how to apply knowledge of data science to your own academic field.
Course characteristics: Most courses are offered as fully on-demand courses to students of all faculties and graduate schools, and can be taken by any student at the university, regardless of location or time.
Each session also includes exercises using programming languages, so that students will not only learn the theories of data science that are necessary regardless of field, but will also learn the skills to handle actual data.
