A First Course in Data Science

AbstractData science is a discipline that provides principles, methodology and guidelines for the analysis of data for tools, values, or insights. Driven by a huge workforce demand, many academic institutions have started to offer degrees in data science, with many at the graduate, and a few at the undergraduate level. Curricula may differ at different institutions, because of varying levels of faculty expertise, and different disciplines (such as Math, computer science, and business etc) in developing the curriculum. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth started offering degree programs in data science from Fall 2015, at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. Quite a few articles have been published that deal with graduate data science courses, much less so dealing with undergraduate ones. Our discussion will focus on undergraduate course structure and function, and specifically, a first course in data science. Our design of this course centers around a concept called the data science life cy...