Which master’s degree is better, computer science vs data science and why?
The one that you want to do.
The career outcomes may be different.
Which interests you?
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Neither one is better. Take the one that interests you more.
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The is some overlap but the jobs are different. CS is building the underlying tools and apps to address a need or gap. Data Science will use tools and figure out a problem with them. Although CS says “science” it’s really engineering of software. While data science is often actually science of studying data and figuring out trends. So which do you prefer???
Think about an app like Excel. Would you want to be the person that added features to Excel? Or the person that uses it to solve business problems?
CS jobs like a SWE would be coding all day long building (likely) production apps. More than likely in an Agile team in a big firm. The toolbox is often a mix of general purpose languages, e.g Java, Rust, Go, Kotlin, Node, .NET, C#, or C++ for a back end and perhaps HTML, CSS, JavaScript/React JS on the front end and maybe some data engineering.
Data Science can also be done in teams and will touch data engineering, backend and front ends as spend a good chunk of time writing code but you are also handling the data and content and doing some kind of analytics or science like figuring out relationships or converting and summarizing text. It’s an applied science where you use the toolbox to get answers. Usually, you are working in scripting style languages SQL, Python, R and their front ends like Dash, Streamlit, Shiny, as well as in cloud ML platforms like AWS, Azure, Databricks, Dataiku, or DataRobot.
The two overlap more for very critical applications (streaming data, spark, very large datasets) where the data scientists desktop toolbox won’t cut it or the work is about deployed models or revenue. Then you have both on a team.
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If a student wants to go to financial firms, which master’s degree better, computer science or data science by the way?
Probably depends upon one’s job functions at the financial services firm.
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CS >> DS when it comes to optionality. Most CS grads would be able to take on DS jobs, it doesn’t work well the other way.
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“Financial firm” is a very broad term. There are many different kinds of financial firms, and many, many kinds of roles within each.
Some roles will require CS skills, some will require DS skills, and most won’t require either (but will require other degrees, skills and experiences).
So your question, as posed, is too broad to answer.
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Yes and no.
If CS focuses on machine learning and data then yes that’s closer to DS. If a DS person takes additional coding classes, more languages, etc then they could get by maybe as a software dev. I would agree it’s more common to be a CS adding data but keep in mind CS had been around a lot time and DS majors are fairly new.
However in data science and statistics majors, you do more than code. It’s about setting up problems, learning and understanding data, testing ideas, solving problems, and getting answers. That’s isn’t the CS skill set per se, so if you are CS and want to do DS then take some stats and data courses also.
If you don’t know what you want to do, try both early or take some online courses to see what each is like.
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Agree with others above. The question is vague and it does depend on you interest
A finance major with an analytics minor would be (officially) qualified to do certain jobs. Especially ones with finance degree in the job requirement
An business analytics major might be a happy medium unless the job requires specific financial skills that might only really taught in the Finance specialty (advanced economic or risk modeling, accounting) versus general business
A data science major may be hired by the same companies but have to work with Finance people (or HR or Legal or Science etc). A minor in business or finance might help understand the problems and make you more attractive but they would be hiring for a DS person and you would not be in a pure Finance role.
This is an important point - most companies would claim they are data companies now which really means all/most companies handle loads of data now and need data scientists and data analysts along with other majors (it’s not that they are all FAANG Companies).
A dual major would be ideal but might be too much depending on your school/program/time and other interests.
Data science person here…that depends on what your interest is. If you haven’t gained work experience yet, meaning you’re going straight to grad school, I would recommend AGAINST data science. I know, sounds counter-productive coming from me, right? It sounds like you haven’t established yourself in a specialty yet. You might find out that you HATE data science. You don’t want to “pigeon-hole” yourself. I recommend going broad and just doing Computer Science. Tech and computers is ridiculously broad with specialties, micro-specialties, and “nano-specialties.” If you do like data science, then go for the data science degree. It’s certainly employable. But if you think you might want to do something else, just go for the CS degree.
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