Page 205 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 6

CPS1883 Christina A. et al.
about high integrity systems in the context of mission critical systems, which,
in case of a failure, can cause immediate, essential problems for the operation
of an organization, such as ERP, CRM, etc. This means that the computer
scientists with a Master’s degree from HIS often hold a position, which involves
both responsibility and a lot of data analysis.
Within the HIS program, two courses concerning statistics and data
analysis are mandatory for all students: The students have to take the basic
course Introductory Data Analysis and the semi-advanced course Data Mining
Methods. In the first course, Introductory Data Analysis, it is assumed that the
students already have passed a statistics course at B.Sc. level, i.e. the course
starts with a review of basic concepts and then moves on to topics within
inferential statistics and linear and logistic regression. The course Data Mining
Methods introduces further methods for analyzing data, such as decision trees,
neural networks and support vector machines, stressing the importance of
data preparatory issues.
After these two courses, the students can choose to study the elective
course Multivariate Data Analysis, which is a high-level course, directly based
on the knowledge the students should have gained in the first two courses.
The Multivariate Data Analysis course prepares for application of advanced
multivariate statistical methods to practical problems and serves as a platform
for those students who consider their master’s thesis to be within data analysis.
Among the contents included in the course, we find topics as principal
component analysis (PCA), partial least squares regression (PLS), discriminant
analysis, canonical correlation and cluster analysis. The objective of this course
is to provide the students with both a sufficient theoretical foundation and in
addition to this to give them a thorough knowledge of how to apply theory to
some real-world situations by using statistical software, such as R, for
analyzing large and complex data sets. The software R has been chosen, since
it is used in many different industrial applications in companies in Germany.
Furthermore, the software is easy to use, but still accommodates advanced
statistical methods. Finally, another reason to use R is that it is free software,
i.e. we do not have to deal with license costs and conditions. The examination
of the course is a computer-based, written exam, i.e. the exam takes place in
a computer room. This enables us to test the students’ ability to apply the
multivariate methods to real-world problems.
The program HIS is taught as a traditional M.Sc. program and in general,
the courses take place face-to-face at the campus. However, in order to
facilitate for the students to organize their busy schedule, the university seeks
to offer online courses as an option for time and location independent studies.
As a part of these efforts, the course Multivariate Data Analysis has been
virtualized and is now offered as an online course.

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