Masters in Data Mining / Analytics / Business Intelligence

Paddy Orwell

Very intersted in getting involved in this area. Just came across this course in Blanch IT (http://www.itb.ie/StudyatITB/bn518BID.html) (see also attached for more detailed curriculum). Was thinking of doing the MSc in Data Analytics in DIT Kevin Street http://www.comp.dit.ie/bmacnamee/analytics/ or maybe, at a push, the Msc in Business Analytics in UCD. Any views on the these course by current students or interested observers, data analysts, would be very welcome. I am in my late thirties and have some statistical and computing background but my main area is labour market research. Just wondering which of these courses would be the best to kick on from my current skill set and which would be of most practical use in terms of data analytics.

Any feedback at all would be much appreciated.

bonjovi

I am in my second year of the part time masters in BI & Data Mining at ITB. I must say that it is a really good course. Here are some of my comments:

1. This course deals mainly with data mining (i.e. predictive data mining, descriptive data mining, geographic data mining, web and text data mining). However, there are some modules that deal with plain BI.

2. There are loads of high end jobs starting to appear in dublin for Data Mining/Analytics. For example, SAP, Accenture, Deloitte are all recruiting but there are very few people with these skills.

3. The lecturers are great. They understand that we are part-time students are are some what flexible when it comes to deadlines.

4. The lectures are ran using an online classroom (Adobe Connect). For me this is the best thing about the course because (i) all lectures are recorded and (ii) I dont have to travell to the college for the lectures. If I was doing the UCD or DIT masters I would have to travell to their campus, which would not suit me with work, etc.

5. There are no exams. Its all continuous assessment. A lot of the projects are hands on as we use RapidMiner data mining software. The lectures will cover this tool in some detail. But you can use other data mining tools such as R, if you want.

6. You don't need to work in the data mining arena to succeed at this course. But by the end of the course you will have the skills to change into this area.

dixiefly

Paddy Orwell wrote: »

Very intersted in getting involved in this area. Just came across this course in Blanch IT (http://www.itb.ie/StudyatITB/bn518BID.html) (see also attached for more detailed curriculum). Was thinking of doing the MSc in Data Analytics in DIT Kevin Street http://www.comp.dit.ie/bmacnamee/analytics/ or maybe, at a push, the Msc in Business Analytics in UCD. Any views on the these course by current students or interested observers, data analysts, would be very welcome. I am in my late thirties and have some statistical and computing background but my main area is labour market research. Just wondering which of these courses would be the best to kick on from my current skill set and which would be of most practical use in terms of data analytics.

Any feedback at all would be much appreciated.

Hi Paddy,
Did you sign up to the course or did you find an alternative?

dixiefly

bonjovi wrote: »

I am in my second year of the part time masters in BI & Data Mining at ITB. I must say that it is a really good course. Here are some of my comments:

1. This course deals mainly with data mining (i.e. predictive data mining, descriptive data mining, geographic data mining, web and text data mining). However, there are some modules that deal with plain BI.

2. There are loads of high end jobs starting to appear in dublin for Data Mining/Analytics. For example, SAP, Accenture, Deloitte are all recruiting but there are very few people with these skills.

3. The lecturers are great. They understand that we are part-time students are are some what flexible when it comes to deadlines.

4. The lectures are ran using an online classroom (Adobe Connect). For me this is the best thing about the course because (i) all lectures are recorded and (ii) I dont have to travell to the college for the lectures. If I was doing the UCD or DIT masters I would have to travell to their campus, which would not suit me with work, etc.

5. There are no exams. Its all continuous assessment. A lot of the projects are hands on as we use RapidMiner data mining software. The lectures will cover this tool in some detail. But you can use other data mining tools such as R, if you want.

6. You don't need to work in the data mining arena to succeed at this course. But by the end of the course you will have the skills to change into this area.

Hi bonjovi,
Thanks for the details - they are very interesting.

Have you found that there is anything lacking in the fact that it is not a traditional style lecture and there is no interaction with other students?

Do you know if SAS can be used for the data mining module?

How does this qualification compare to the UCD or DIT ones considering that there are no exams?

Paddy Orwell

Yes thanks for the reply Bonjovi - sounds like a very good course.
Dixiefly: I plumped for the Msc in Comp. Science (Negotiated Learning). It allows you to pick from a range of modules across comp sc., stats, maths, physics, business etc. I chose modules most closely alligned to data mining (data mining, machine learning, multivariate analysis, statistical data mining, sql etc) The data mining module wasn't great and machine learning was average. The stats courses have been good so far - learning a good bit of R.

yam

Hi bonjovi and others,
Do u still recommend to do this course in ITB?
How is the Job opportunities ?
Please could you advice.