Data Science Fundamentals

This certificate will provide an introduction to data science and technical computing skills. Students will learn the basics of working in a Unix or Linux environment, basic programming techniques using Perl or Python, database fundamentals including SQL, data visualization techniques, and statistics.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this program, students will be able to:

• Write Unix commands to manipulate directories, their contents, and permissions.
• Create regular expressions to perform pattern matching.
• Analyze common text processing tasks and interpret technical specifications to create and program algorithmic solutions.
• Write multiple table database queries in SQL.
• Access and analyze data to produce information visualizations and discover patterns.

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Occupational: preparation for entry-level employment as statistical assistants, scientific research assistants, software developers working with data, and related fields. This certificate is best paired with other educational credentials such as a Bachelor's Degree in a scientific field, in which the student wants to manipulate data programmatically.

Course	Title	Units	Year/Semester (Y1 or S1)
CS 160A	Introduction to Unix/Linux	2	S1
CS 256	Data Visualization	3	S2
CS 131A or CS 113A	Python Programming OR Perl Programming	4	S1
MATH 80 or ECON 5 or PSYC 5 or LALS 5	Probability and Statistics OR Introductory Statistics for Economics, Business and Social Sciences OR Statistics for Behavioral Sciences OR Introduction to Statistical Methods in Latin American and Latino/a Studies	5	S1
CS 150A or CS 151A or CS 155A	Introduction to SQL Databases and NoSQL OR Oracle SQL Databases OR MySQL Datatabases	3	S1

The courses above cover the basics of working in a Unix or Linux environment, basic programming techniques using Perl or Python, database fundamentals including SQL, data visualization techniques, and statistics.

Our industry advisory committee recommended we create such a certificate as documented here: http://fog.ccsf.edu/%7Ecpersiko/csDept/IndustryAdvisoryMinutes2017.pdf, and we also have received many requests from students for such a program.

College of San Mateo: Data Science and Big Data certificate. It focuses more on Big Data and Data Warehousing, and less on Data Visualization. I have been in contact with Mounjid Moussalem regarding this program.