<p>I saw this article about Data Mining, but I was wondering what one would major in if they wanted to go into it? I have only seen graduate programs and certificates for Data Mining. What would one major in at the undergraduate level?</p>
<p>Business (marketing), Statistics, or CS.
In the business world, usually CS people end up doing the actual mining, but the business people think that they are the only ones smart enough to actually define how the data is represented or that they are the only ones smart enough to interpret and understand the data. In the scientific world it probably works the same way: the CS people get the data, manipulate it, reformat it, merge it, sort it, collapse it, massage it, etc. but the biologists, etc. insist that people with their expertise need to analyze the mined data.</p>
<p>Well, it has nothing to do with being too smart or not smart enough… it’s about specialization. Mining the data is just as important and just as hard as interpreting it… that’s why the business people and scientists don’t do it themselves. The computer people have training which makes them better at it… it would be inappropriate to ask a CS person to analyze business or biological data in the same way it would be inappropriate to ask business or biology people to design an algorithm for something or to write a piece of software.</p>
<p>Yes. And data presentation and visualization is just as important as ‘analysis’ (which usually means writing up a marketing speak summary after all the statistical tests, correlations, and what not are done). I wanted the OP to understand that the process has many facets and roles so he/she can decide where they fit in.</p>