Google will even hire an Archaeologist!

…But not just any archaeologist. The archaeologist needs to know something about Bayesian statistics,  analytics and programming. Check out a recent article from the New York Times,

For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics

One quote in the NYT article stands out:

“I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”

The statistics referred to by Varian his not just POS (plain old statistics). He is referring to inferential statistics, predictive modeling and machine learning algorithms. In computer science, these are referred to collectively as a branch of Artificial Intelligence.

Where can students go when the United States to understand how to position themselves to be competitive in a data-rich society?  They can come to the College of Charleston and major in Discovery Informatics or Computer Science. Discovery informatics includes the knowledge and skill set that that archaeologist, Carrie Grimes, needed to know to land that job at Google in Mountain View.

In addition, the computer science faculty at the College of Charleston continue to work on another, new and innovative degree program called Business Informatics. Business Informatics will emphasize business analytics, social network analysis and the technologies that support  these areas, which include XML technologies, scripting, Web services, service oriented architecture, and business process modeling.

So whoever your roommates are, clue them in before it’s too late! If they are creative, like to work with people and love to solve problems, then they can prepare themselves for an amazing career with an education in computing, computational thinking or discovery informatics at the College of Charleston.   And they can still call themselves an archaeologist for that matter, albeit a digital archaeologist.

I know not everyone is up to the challenge. Jumping into the dynamic and creative fields of computer science and discovery informatics takes energy, creativity and intelligence. So we don’t expect these high-power majors to be the largest on campus. But that’s okay. We will still need the service-class people, i.e., undergraduate majors who do not understand or use computational concepts and tools, to assist those of us in the creative class, so that we may enjoy the fruits of our labor in the conceptual age.

References:

Richard Florida (service class,  creative class concepts)

Daniel Pink (information age, conceptual age concepts)