The UBC Master of Data Science (MDS) program is a 10-month professional master’s program in Data Science. The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a comprehensive research-intensive university, consistently ranked among the 40 best universities in the world. The MDS program was launched in September 2016 and is offered by a collaboration between the UBC Department of Computer Science and Department of Statistics. The program involves 24 one-month courses followed by a two-month Capstone Project. MDS started at UBC’s main campus in Vancouver, and has since expanded to the Okanagan campus and to a computational linguistics option of the program. At UBC, our students learn to:

  • Apply a scientific approach to marshalling and exploring data, generating and testing hypotheses, designing experiments, and testing/validating methods.
  • Select an appropriate data analysis approach and apply it to a new problem area in a context-appropriate manner.
  • Manipulate messy, ill-formed data to extract meaningful insights.
  • Appropriately select and tailor data science methods to deal with diverse data types (numeric, categorical, text, dates, graphs, etc.) across diverse subject-area domains.
  • Collaborate with and communicate results of data science experiments to diverse audiences, and recommend subsequent actions to decision-makers.
  • Apply fundamental statistical thinking in the data analysis process, with reference to concepts such as overfitting, confounding, bias, variability, validity, and reliability.
  • Apply fundamental programming principles in the data analysis process, with particular emphasis on modularity and reproducibility.

To learn more about MDS, you may wish to visit some of the following pages: