Information Science?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

<p>Does anyone know anything about the Information Science major? I'm taking an intro class next year to explore a major switch but would love to hear more about the program from those who have some knowledge. I've looked at the information presented on the website but would like to hear some insight from those who can tell me more about it.</p>

<p>Link that I've checked out: <a href="http://www.cs.columbia.edu/education/undergrad/ccguide%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cs.columbia.edu/education/undergrad/ccguide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Bumping this thread. My area of interest is computational linguistics, and so I might do a double major in linguistics and CS…</p>

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<p>I’m a regular CS major in SEAS, but I’m on a machine learning path, so I know what a lot of this stuff is. Basically, it’s meant to give you the skills to do data mining and information retrieval (more on what those terms mean later) in the the setting (social science, economics, biotech) that you choose (though you could easily hop to another one with a little effort). </p>

<p>What data mining means is that you can use the large repositories of raw information, created by financial market records, the internet and various biology experiments and comb through them using computational techniques to extract data and patterns relevant to answering a question. This is inherently interdisciplinary, as you need to know not only the domain you’re working in but also the appropriate computational techniques.</p>

<p>Pros:
-The skills you gain will make you incredibly desirable on the job market, especially if you have strong programming skills all-around. They’ll also serve as a terrific springboard for a masters, MBA or PhD, though they don’t have so much application to Med/Law schools.
-It’s a hell of a lot more interesting (IMO) than software or systems.</p>

<p>Cons:
-It’s not easy. If you have a weak programming background especially you’ll suffer through some of these courses. The knowledge you have to pick up about the other fields will be non-trivial too, if you want to do well.
-Columbia, as far as I know, doesn’t really have any courses that fully combine the skills you want to gain through this program. The curriculum is a sort of mash-up that combines classes designed for other programs into a new one they hope will teach the right things, rather than a fine-tuned set of well-considered courses. It may still work quite well though, for all I know.</p>