If you study Information System Management (ISM) you are in the right field to pursue a career in Big Data. While there are many programming languages that are being taught in college such as C++, Java, or Python but many Big Data applications are using another language called “R” since Big Data tools such as Pig/Hive and Hadoop are mostly written in “R” language. This language is designed especially for statistical computing and graphics and widely used among Big data statisticians and data mining specialist for developing statistical software and data analysis. “R” is also focusing on graphical techniques such as linear and nonlinear modeling, time-series analysis, and classification.
A student wrote to me: “I am fascinated about your articles on big data and want to learn more about it. As a first year student in Information System Management, I do not know is this the right field to study or should I switch to Computer Science? Which programming language should I learn so I can work in this area? Please advice.”
Answer: If you study Information System Management (ISM) you are in the right field to pursue a career in Big Data. While there are many programming languages that are being taught in college such as C++, Java, or Python but many Big Data applications are using another language called “R” since Big Data tools such as Pig/Hive and Hadoop are mostly written in “R” language. This language is designed especially for statistical computing and graphics and widely used among Big data statisticians and data mining specialist for developing statistical software and data analysis. “R” is also focusing on graphical techniques such as linear and nonlinear modeling, time-series analysis, and classification.
However if you already know one programming language well, it is easy to learn another. If you can program in Java or C++, you can learn R or Python in a matter of few weeks so I would not be too concerned with the programming language. What you need is to understand how data are collected, organized, and analyzed to extract the important information.
To start, you should begin with Excel, the spreadsheet program that store, organize and manipulating data. You will learn to put data into spreadsheet cells, using mathematics formulas to calculate or manipulate these data. This is the most basic skill that you must know how to perform basic operations to find values such as profit or loss as in finance applications etc. You will learn how to create graphic display from these data or create reports.
After you have mastered the concept of Excel spreadsheet, you can move on to database to learn more about the relationships between these data. You will learn how to collect data, organize them into files and records, and store them for quick access. You also learn how to build table and index to manipulate these data and analyze them to create special reports. You learn to use Database Management System (DBMS), the software program that help you to create and manage of databases. You may use Microsoft’s SQL server, Oracle, or MySQL to master your skill in database management. (Database is often taught in the third year in the ISM program)
After you learn about database you may move on to learn about Business intelligence (BI), the software applications used to analyze data to identify valuable information. BI is made up of several related activities such as data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting. Today most companies are using BI to improve management decision making, reduce wastes or identify new business opportunities. (BI is often taught in the third or fourth year in the ISM program)
Most bachelor’s degree programs in Information System Management (ISM) cover database management and business intelligent but to learn more about Big data, you will need to continue to the Master’s degree in Data science, Large Scale data analysis or Computational science etc. In these programs you will learn more about Big Data frameworks such as Hadoop; tools such as Pig and Hive, NonSQL, MapReduce etc. I have written several articles on Big Data in this blog that you can read further to learn more about Big Data.
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