School of MEM announces Minor in Analytics and Decision Sciences
March 27, 2020
The King’s School of Management, Economics, and Mathematics (MEM) is pleased to announce they have received approval to offer a Minor in Analytics and Decision Sciences (ADS). Intake into the first year will begin in Fall 2020.
Analytics and Decision Sciences is an interdisciplinary minor focusing on the intersection between data and decision making. The mathematical foundation includes matrix algebra, calculus, and statistics. Business, cognitive science, and philosophy are also foundational subjects.
The ADS Minor will appeal to students who like solving puzzles, coding and working with numbers, as well as students drawn to management, business and/or social sciences. Students will benefit from the concrete career skills and experiential learning with extensive labs, tutorials, and projects.
Dr. Joseph Turnbull, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Mathematics in The School of MEM says he is excited to see what opportunities will be available for students in the ADS minor, as well as King’s more broadly.
“An enhancement of career skills of graduates will be a major byproduct of introducing this minor and many of the courses are designed to draw links to government agencies, local businesses, not-for-profits, and various community groups,” says Dr. Turnbull.
“ADS does involve using tools like Excel, VBA, Python, and R to solve problems, but it is about much more than that. What makes ADS distinct is the linking of the mathematical, statistical and computational realms to problems in the management and social sciences.
“We also want students to question assumptions and be wary of hidden biases, and we lean on the expertise of philosophers and cognitive scientists to help tease out those influences. There are also serious ethical issues in the analytics realm that will benefit from discussions involving multiple perspectives. Many King’s courses now offered by the political science and sociology departments on topics like artificial intelligence and human rights, or surveillance and society, align very well,” says Dr. Turnbull.
The ADS minor can be combined with any module, allowing for the completion of, for example, a psychology or philosophy honors specialization with a minor in analytics. Combinations with an economics or MOS (management) module would create a very quantitatively-oriented program, such as finance with analytics or accounting with analytics.
The minor is open to students at all Western campuses. Students interested in the Minor in ADS should contact The School of MEM.