Department of Mathematics

We offer an MS degree in Interdisciplinary Data Science with Major in Mathematics. This MS degree can open up a wealth of career options, enabling graduates to enter a rapidly growing and vibrant sector of the economy with a job market that offers a breadth of opportunities. Our students will acquire skills in high demand by governmental agencies and a range of industries seeking to capitalize on the era of Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. The program emphasizes the mathematical underpinnings of data science along with data analysis, computation and visualization. Students will learn the mathematical background necessary to understand how and why many machine learning and data analysis algorithms work. A mathematical perspective on the subject leads to a deeper understanding of the methodology and tools of data science and will prepare students to analyze and visualize data, design new tools and adapt existing methods and algorithms when necessary. In addition to a set of core courses, the curriculum will include advanced courses on topics such as principles and foundations of machine learning, graphs and networks, numerical linear algebra, numerical optimization, and topological data analysis.



The Mathematics Department is a sponsoring member of the Erdős Institute, an organization which provides resources for STEM graduate students and postdocs interested in utilizing data science tools in their research and/or jobs in industry. Graduate students and postdocs in the Mathematics department have the opportunity to enroll in the Erdős Institute programming, which allows access to many excellent resources for learning about data science, career planning and networking. Erdős Institute programming includes: data science bootcamps, providing training in general data science techniques in Python; minicourses on specialized data science topics; career exploration seminars; 1-on-1 career coaching; behavioral and technical interview prep workshops; and employer and alumni career connections. Contact Tom Needham (tneedham@fsu.edu), the Erdős Institute faculty representative at FSU and the faculty advisor for the Math-data science program, for details.