The Master of Arts in Data Analysis and Applied Statistics is offered by Virginia Tech’s Department of Statistics. The degree is also sponsored by other programs and departments including the Education Research and Evaluation Program (EDRE), the Departments of Psychology, Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Geography, Economics, Human Development, Sociology, Psychology, Biological Sciences, and the Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology program.
The curriculum provides a broad variety of applied statistical tools to students, without the emphasis on statistical theory steeped in mathematics. The M.A. DAAS degree is structured so that certain courses that emphasize the fundamentals of statistics, are required. Electives in specialized topics in statistics are then be chosen by the student. Thus, the degree offers sufficient depth in the fundamentals of contemporary applied statistical methods and gives students an understanding of how these methods are applied indifferent fields.
Students seeking admission to the M.A. DAAS degree are those wishing to expand their statistical knowledge beyond the material presented in graduate service courses, tackling more specialized topics, whether they are taught statistical methodology by the Department of Statistics or by other programs/departments on campus. The Statistics Department is fully prepared to take on the qualified students who seek the M.A. DAAS degree alone or seek an M.S. degree and/or Ph.D. in another discipline, and desire to complement their training with the M.A. DAAS degree. The applied statistics emphasis of the M.A. DAAS will empower students to perform more statistically sophisticated research, improving the quality of their theses/dissertations, and leading to papers published in higher level journals than would be possible without such courses.