Discover Analytics

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Speaker 1: Hello. I am professor Asha Rao and I am the Associate Dean of Mathematical Sciences here at RMIT. Today, I'm going to tell you a bit about maths and stats about why they will open the universe for you. In particular, I will be talking about the Bachelor of Analytics. I will tell you a little bit about the core structure and how you can do your placements and how you get connected to industry through this program. I will talk of the many pathways that are there and the career outcomes that will be there for you if you do this program. So remember these programs are world renowned and allow you to work across a variety of disciplines. You will be able to replicate real world experience in the classroom, as well as outside. Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge this country that we are on. So in that I wish to acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct our business. 

RMIT respectfully acknowledges their leaders past, present and emerging. Let us talk a bit about the Bachelor of Analytics. But before I do that, let me tell you a little bit about the mathematical sciences. Now a 2018 publication by the US Department of Labor titled Beyond the Numbers said that the mathematical sciences occupations are going to rise by 29% or over that more than that between 2016 and 2026. So if you ever wanted to be, or you thought about being in the mathematical sciences now is the time. The main reason why this is the case is because of the use of data by businesses and by government. So what about this data? The two years between 2016 and 2018, the world generated 90% of the data that was ever in existence. So you can see in those two years, we generated more data than had been generated for the thousands of years before that. 

So digital data. So what is a Bachelor of Analytics student, do? He learns how to convert that data into information. And that is some of the things you will learn in the Bachelor of Analytics, but also if you want to do just mathematics and statistics, you can learn some of that in the Bachelor of Mathematics and Statistics as well. So let's think about occupations. The reason that we look at data science or analytics is because the demand for data scientists in particular is going to rise in the US by 28%. So that means that openings for data professionals are going up from 346,000 to 2.7 million or have gone up actually. And the salaries will range anywhere from 140,000 to 117,000. Now that's US. What about us Australia? 

In Australia, the figures are quite similar. They range from a starting salary of say, example of business analyst who can do data science, machine learning makes sense of data. It goes anywhere from about 65 to 70,000, right up to $250,000 per year. So what sort of jobs are there? There are all sorts of jobs. You can be a statistics. You can just be a statistician. As a matter of fact, with the current COVID-19 situation, it has become so obvious that statistics and data science and analytics are the need. We talked about flattening the curve. We talked about R numbers. You'll have heard about this in the news, in the media, on social media everywhere. Now, where did those come from? They come from statistics. And that is the core of the Analytics Degree. 

Now it's not just statistics that you will use. You will use operations research. What is operations research? It is trying to maximize to optimize stuff. You will learn about computer science, you will learn Python, you will learn machine learning, you will learn data visualization, you will learn how to wrangle data, how to out beat data into shape. But be careful there is data if it is tortured, I can tell you anything. And we don't want that. We want data to tell us what is in the data, not what we want to know. There is of course business, which needs data scientists. They need analysts. There are so many businesses today, which will come and give us data for the students to work on because they have data, but they can't make sense of that data. And the analysts or rather the students in the Analytics Degree are the ones who work on this data, who give insights back to business so that business can make those strategic decisions based on the data that they are gathering. 

There is economics. You can not work in today's world without being part of the economics. And I've already told you why analytics and mathematics and mathematical sciences are part of the economics because they are the jobs of the future. Okay? So what's in the program. Let's think a little bit about the core structure. You will learn enough mathematics and statistics to help you make the decision on which courses you want to take. So the opportunity you have here in the first instance is to have a little bit of choice to think about where do you want to go? Which industry are you interested in? It is very important to understand that, not to go in and say, "Okay, at the end of the three years, I'm going to work where I want to work." No, you need to tap into that at every point think, "Where do I want to work? What is exciting to me?" Because as they say, if you do something exciting, you will never work a day of your life because everything you do will be fun. 

And believe me, that's how I work. So you will learn some maths. You will learn some statistics. You will learn a little bit of calculus. Some of the words you understand, you will learn things like machine learning. You will also learn things like discrete mathematics. You will learn a whole bunch of things which will allow you to understand how to use mathematics and statistics, not just to understand data, but to be able to use that data, not just to get information, but to visualize that information, you will have an opportunity to do work integrated learning of will. Either in a simulated way, and as I said before, when industries or businesses give us data to analyze that is part of the simulator. 

You will work with these industries, but you will also have opportunities to be actually placed in this industry. To do internships with them. You will have opportunities to sit in to a seminars by these industry experts. You will have opportunities to be able to go into state and even overseas to be able to do these internships. So the world is out there for you. The question is, how are you going to use it? Not just, what are we going to do? How are you going to capitalize on what is available for you at RMIT? What are the entry requirements for the Bachelor of Analytics? Now last year's ATAR was 76.5. But of course that comes with a caveat. If there is something else you have done in the middle. One of the things that we like at RMIT is to give you a chance to see, have you done something else? 

Are you coming after a year's break? Have you tried something else? Come and talk to us. So what do you need? What are the entry requirements? Ideally, you would have done units three or four of mathematics. So math methods or specialists, and you'd have got at least 20 in one of those. So if you're an international student, you can still enroll in this degree. What we would be looking for is an equivalent to the Australian requirements, which is the ATAR of 76.5 or higher. But as I said, if you have done something else, and then you have found that this is what takes your fancy, come and talk to us. That is the important thing. The important thing that you bring to this degree would be enthusiasm, keenness, and a willingness to learn. You need to be willing to learn. And that is when the world opens to you. 

So included with the mathematics requirements is also a requirement for English that you will have got if you did your VCE or year 12 in Australia, you'll have got a score of at least 25. Now, if you're an international student, then we would be looking for the IELTS or the TOEFL or the Pearson Test of an equivalent level of English. All classes here are in English. So if you're an international student, you need to bring your English up. Mathematics in many ways is a universal language, but you need to understand what the teacher is saying which is why we need a minimum requirement of English. Where do the industry connections come in? So the courses at RMIT are always constructed in consultation with industry. We have an industry advisory committee, which is very active and which talks to us about what should be in the degree. 

For example, what languages should we be teaching? Which is why we have Python now into the degree. These industry experts are from banks, but also CSIRO. They are from companies like SAS and Minitab. They are from Victoria police and also places like Coles and Woolworths. So that is where our graduates will go, in the different variety of industries out here. Everybody has data and everybody needs that data to be analyzed. So, as I said before, you will learn courses about data wrangling, how do you pre-process the data so you can actually make sense of it. As I say to my students, what is your question? Because then you can get an answer. 

Often the question has to be well defined and that's what data pre-processing does, gets the data into a shape where you can ask questions. You will do data visualization so it's very important to be able to show your results, the data, the information you've gathered. You have to be able to show it to your managing director, the CEO, your boss, the teachers, whoever and you can do that using data visualization. You will learn how to do time series modeling and predictive modeling. So for example, with the COVID-19, how do we know about the second wave? Flattening the curve is somebody getting a droid is some country getting it wrong? The fact that there won't be enough ventilators for example, all of that comes from the sort of modeling from time series modeling and predictive modeling. 

But to be able to do all of this, you have to know certain languages, certain tools. And one of the criteria within this degree is that you will learn to use SAS. And if you learn to use SAS, you will be able to get a SAS certificate. So that is in built into this program. The ability to give you something more than just a degree. So you will get a Bachelor of Analytics, but you could also get a SAS certificate at the end of that. You will learn how to use R you will learn how to use Python. So you can judge when you're out there in industry which is the best tool, which is the best language. You will learn how to do machines learning. How do you program the computers? How do you write algorithms, which can walk with the quintillion bytes of data that are out there. And you will learn how to do cloud computing, know working with the cloud so that you don't have to have a high data requirement in your own laptop. 

How do you work with computer? And in all of these, there will be the chances later on to do a Master of Analytics or a Master of Cybersecurity, which are also part of the mathematics and statistics discipline at RMIT. I've already spoken about stimulated work integrated requirements that are inside this program. I have spoken about industry placements and I've spoken about project scope. Because in the projects we are talking about, for example, COVID-19. And that is the thing you can get data from anything. So a couple of years ago, I had a student work with me, looking at data from social media which had been used for election campaigning. How do you tell what is happening with that? How do you correlate what is happening in the social media with what happens on election day? So those are some of the things you can learn. 

Data is everywhere and you can work with it in this program. And there are global opportunities. RMIT has partnerships with 215 universities across the globe. More as we talk. You can use who's these connections to do a semester in one of those universities, you can use these connections to do a placement overseas. You can use these connections to just go and visit. So there are many, many opportunities. It all depends on you, how are you going to use these opportunities? What are the career outcomes? You're going to be a data analyst. You can be an analytics consultant. You can be an operations research analyst or a business intelligence analyst. You can be a financial analyst and you can be a statistician. Statisticians do rock. So statistics is the way of the future. And that is what all the research, whether it is in the US or it is here, whether it is Deloitte or it is Burning Glass. They are all telling you that mathematics and statistics are the way of the future. 

So, finally, what are the important dates for 2021? There are, of course the retack dates and when you apply and all of that. That your school will be able to tell you better. For RMIT, for the higher education first semester, 22nd to the 26th of February is orientation, where you will learn how to use the library, where is everything? Believe me, RMIT is a maze. It is also amazing. So come in and spend that time, spend that week to learn about RMIT. What is available? Often students don't know what's available to them. Your fees are paying for so much more than just your classes they're paying for so much of support. So find out about the support. 

Classes will actually begin on the 1st of March and the last day to enroll for semester one is the 8th of March. So make sure you know these dates. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me and to learn about these globally recognized programs. If you have questions or you need more information on these programs, do check the program information available on the RMIT website, study with us page. Thank you again. 

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