Mathematics of Data Science

Catalog description

Introduction to the mathematics and algorithms that are central to a variety of data science applications. Basic mathematical concepts underlying popular data science algorithms will be introduced and students will write code implementing these algorithms. We will discuss the impact of these algorithms on society and ethical implications. Algorithms examined include: Google's pagerank, principal component analysis for visualizing high dimensional data, hidden Markov models for speech recognition, and classifiers detecting spam emails. Linear algebra and basic probability will be the mathematical focus and there will be a programming component to this class using the R programming language. Open only to students in the Focus Program. Department consent required.