Most organizations, universities and individuals face the daunting tasks of categorizing, understanding, collecting or even storing large amounts of information and data, often on a day-to-day basis.
It could be financial information used by credit card companies, payroll information in large organizations, perhaps the not-so-simple task of predicting the weather, or even pouring over the vast amounts of information collected by security agencies to prevent the next terrorist attack. Computing systems, organizations and human beings who are seeing their resources stretched thinly struggle to comprehend the information collected, and once the information is understood, how to deal with it becomes another issue.
Besides, how can one be sure if the information collected is actually useful? This brings us to the quality of the data being collected. Then comes the issue of how to make sense of it, followed closely by thoughts on how secure or private the data is and finally how one uses the information gathered from it.
N.C. State has started an initiative titled “the Initiative for Advanced Analytics,” to deal with similar and other broader issues.
Analytics is defined by the American Heritage dictionary as logic dealing with analysis. The website of the initiative states, “the term ‘Advanced Analytics’ refers to the wide spectrum of activities including data collection and integration, statistical methods and complex processes for enterprise-wide decision making.”
A year-long assessment by a Provost-commissioned task force resulted in the formation of this initiative, to collect ideas and thoughts from a diverse set of departments across the University to create a professional graduate degree to begin sometime in 2007. This came out of an increased demand for a professional workforce that understands the techniques used in analytics and with a strong technical background.
A working group comprised an eclectic group of over 30 N.C. State faculty members to discuss the content and delivery of the proposed Master of Science degree in analytics. These faculty members are from various backgrounds in computer science, statistics, textiles, operations research, finance, accounting, communications, industrial engineering and even philosophy.
The University has made a commitment to support the initiative over the next three years. In July, the SAS Institute announced that it would throw its weight behind the initiative and provide strong support.
In June 2006, Michael Rappa, the Alan T. Dickenson Distinguished University Professor of Technology Management, became the director for the Initiative for Advanced Analytics. He states, “analytics is a emerging interdisciplinary field that focuses on the tools and methods for gaining insight from the vast stores of data accumulated by organizations today.”
He is quick to point out, though, that everything is still in the preliminary stages, and the proposed master’s degree must first be approved by University authorities and the UNC system.
Rappa discussed the possibilities that lie ahead for the initiative. According to him, this would be an interdisciplinary program that would heavily draw upon concepts from various, diverse disciplines to provide a professional master’s degree with the following four elements:
1. Tools : students would be able to work with the same kind of leading-edge tools used in industry today. This way, they will be able to fit right into the industry when they graduate, and have a lesser “ramp-up” time.
2. Methods: ideas on data mining, optimization, data handling, quality of the data collected, visualization of the data and so on would be instilled among the students.
3. Applications : learning about how the tools and the methods are applied to complex problems in the industrial arena. In areas such as finance (credit card companies), crime prevention (fraud detection, money laundering, etc.), computer science (data mining, computer graphics and visualization, etc.) or even management (supply chain, facility location, inventory optimization, etc.).
4. Practice: the students will be able to gain expertise in working on real-world problems in teams. This will give them an insight on working with different people with different expertise in varying areas and how to manage the team’s expertise to solve realistic problems.
As the details for the proposed program emerge, Rappa said students can expect to see a rigorous and intensive one-year degree program with a strong practical focus.
Matt Stallmann, associate professor of computer science, is “excited by the prospect of being involved in the design of a degree program that has much latitude and as much scope for innovation in education as this one.” He is one of the members in the faculty working group and believes he brings expertise on two levels — (a) graph drawing as a visualization technique and (b) combinatorial optimization problems related to management (supply chain, stock cutting, etc.). As for the computer science perspective, the scope is primarily data collection, analysis and visualization, combining, at times, very broad research and academic areas.
Sarat Kocherlakota, a doctoral student in the computer science department, is conducting research on data visualization techniques and computer graphics. He believes that one of the main problems that the scientific community faces now is how to make sense of the immense volume of data being produced on a daily basis.
Finding more efficient and effective solutions to store, retrieve and analyze data (to find patterns, relationships, anomalies, etc.) and to convey these results to users has become critical on various levels. He believes that such solutions would require better integration of existing and new techniques from various disciplines and welcomes the new analytics initiative as a step in a positive direction for N.C. State and the scientific community in general.
