What are the differences in these majors. I’m more interested on knowing what big data is and what colleges offer it.
Big data isn’t a major. It’s a term used to describe large volumes of data…pretty much what it sounds like. Before the technological revolution, most datasets were relatively small by today’s standards - maybe a few hundred or few thousand observations. But since technology has flourished, computers can collect and store many times that amount of information - and so a “big data” set may have millions of variables and observations. The speed at which you collect the data has also changed - rather than having to manually collecting the data quarterly or monthly, new technological processes allow companies to collect data in near real-time. The data might be unstructured and collected from a lot of different sources in different formats, meaning it needs to be ‘cleaned’, processed and structured in a way that allows us to analyze it.
Because of all of these aspects, new techniques have been devised to handle that volume - usually combining math/statistics and computer science. This field is often called “data science”, which I think may be what you’re thinking of. Data science is a nascent interdisciplinary field that combines math, statistics, and computer science to teach students the tools and skills they need to manage and analyze humongous datasets (“big data”) and provide insight and value to companies based upon interpretations of that analysis. Data science is usually offered at the graduate level, but there are some colleges and universities that are beginning to offer majors, minors, or certificates in big data to their undergraduate students.
The difference between the two majors is really going to vary based upon what school you attend. Traditionally, a statistics major would take the more traditional math/statistics courses: a foundation in calculus and linear algebra, plus classes in mathematical statistics and probability, a mixture of applied and theoretical. However, even basic statistical jobs require a working knowledge of coding and computer science these days (heck - I’m a psychologist who uses quantitative methods and I know how to code, at least in statistical programs). So many colleges do offer more applied courses for statistics majors and strongly encourage or require them to take computer science courses.
A data science major is going to include more math other than statistics and more computer science courses, especially in data mining, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. It’s really kind of like a joint major in CS and statistics, except with the CS courses being hand-picked as good for statistical manipulation and the statistics courses being hand-picked for being good for big data. In fact, Columbia’s new major in data science used to be called simply “Computer Science and Statistics”. You can look at the curriculum here: https://mice.cs.columbia.edu/c/d.php?d=228.
Since so few colleges offer data science, you can also look at colleges that have good math departments with lots of statistics courses and/or good statistics departments + good computer science departments - and either double major, major and minor, or create your own data science major.