Major Requirements

Tapping the economic and social potential of big data requires overcoming two challenges. The first is understanding how to handle and analyze large bodies of raw information. The second is knowing how to apply these data in research, problem solving and decision making without compromising values like individual privacy. Data science provides tools for exploring data but it doesn’t tell us what to look for or whether what we think we find is really there. Penn State’s Social Data Analytics Program gives students both the technical skills of a data science degree — developing computational skills to collect and manage the data, get it in the right form and identify useful patterns — and knowledge of social context and social science methods to apply those skills to real problems effectively and ethically.