Certificate in Statistical and Computational Data Science

Designed for professionals seeking to enhance their data science skills.

The certificate in statistical and computational data science is designed for professionals seeking to enhance their data science skills or current graduate students who want to round out their degree.

It is a master's-level, five-course (15 credit) certificate that includes graduate-level course requirements from both statistics and computer science.  

Graduate matriculated students or post-graduate non-degree students can enroll in the required courses for the Certificate in Statistical and Computational Data Science, as long as they have the prerequisites for the courses and submit the required pre-application. 

For students entering the program without strong computer programming skills, we offer a one-credit bridge course: Introduction to Numerical Computing with Python (CICS 580). This course covers the basics of Python, which is one of the core languages used in data science.

Course Requirements 

Bridge Course

  • CICS 580 Introduction to Numerical Computing with Python 

All students must complete one of the following courses with a grade of "B" or better:

  • COMPSCI 589 Machine Learning 
  • COMPSCI 689 Machine Learning 

Students need to complete one or two of the following courses with a grade of "B" or better:

  • COMPSCI 514 Algorithms for Data Science 
  • COMPSCI 532 Systems for Data Science
  • COMPSCI 571 Data Visualization and Exploration or COMPSCI 690V Visual Analytics 
  • STATISTC 633 Data Visualization (formerly 697V)
  • COMPSCI 685 Advanced Natural Language Processing 
  • COMPSCI 690S Human-Centric Machine Learning

Students need to complete two or three of the following courses with a grade of "B" or better:

  • STAT 525 Regression Analysis
  • STAT 535 Statistical Computing (formerly STAT 597A Computational Statistics)
  • STAT 597S Intro to Probability and Math Statistics
  • STAT 607 Mathematical Statistics I 
  • STAT 608 Mathematical Statistics II 
  • STAT 625 Regression Modeling (formerly STAT 697R)
  • STAT 705 Linear Models 

Completion of the Certificate

Students who have completed the certificate requirements should submit a certificate eligibility form found here to the Graduate Programs Office. The graduation eligibility deadlines can be found here for obtaining your certificate in the mail. Email the form to kskemer [at] cs [dot] umass [dot] edu (kskemer[at]cs[dot]umass[dot]edu).