So - first of all - what do data scientists do?
"The clicks that you make, the pages that you view, the things that you put in your shopping cart, the things that you take out, that's a stream of raw data. And so it is a set of tools from the areas of mathematics, statistics and computer science that allow data scientists to turn those streams of large raw data into usable information," explains Geoffrey Buhl, Professor of Mathematics and Chair of Mathematics and Data Science at Cal State Channel Islands.
Buhl says employment in the field of data scientists is projected to grow faster than the average for other occupations.
"The number of data scientists that are employed will increase by 36% over the next decade," says Buhl, and he says it's hard to recruit data scientists from outside of the region because of the high cost of living.
The new degree in Data Science at Cal State Channel islands starts in the Fall.