<p>I have always been interested in computers; however, I have heard horror stories of how difficult it is to be a computer science major. So I was wondering if there are other majors out there that are similar to computer science without such a demanding workload.</p>
<p>Depending on what branches of CS your looking at, Operation Research is very similar to the numerical analysis of CS (in fact they’re pretty much the same field, but I can’t say much about whether the course load is lighter than that of CS). OR is basically optimization, which can be boiled down to being able to reliably find minimums to any function. For example, in algebra, you may have been asked to find the minimums of a quadratic function</p>
<p>f(x) = ax^2 + bx + c</p>
<p>Well, all you really need to do is to graph this on a calculator and try to look for the minimum. After you’ve done enough of these problems, you realize that if a was positive, you will always have a finite minimum centered around what appears to be -b/2a whereas if a was negative, you won’t ever be able to find the minimum graphically because your graphing calculator can’t reach down to negative infinity.</p>
<p>In OR, you do a lot more than this, but the idea behind such numerical optimization nearly always boil down to optimizing these quadratics. Furthermore, you learn ways of searching for the minimum that utilizes some kind of a “best-for-me” or greedy strategy (heuristic based search) that are very effective for certain types of problems (ever heard of genetic algorithms?). Later on, you’ll also cover a some material on bounding seemingly hard problems and lot of material on graphs, culminating with maximizing traffic flow within a network.</p>
<p>I’d say there’s more to OR than what failboat mentioned but he covered some things. As a general rule OR is about maximizing or minimizing something, whether that is a cost, probability of an event, or any number of other things. On one end there’s abstracting a problem in real life to systems of equations, and on the other there’s the algorithms for solving those quickly. Regardless if you call the former OR or not, you’d probably learn it if you went into OR. </p>
<p>Depending on your school, this might (is very likely to) be under the Industrial Engineering department. As for workload, I’d say where I go the workload for Industrial Engineering is less than that of Computer Science in undergrad, but much of the Industrial Engineering coursework isn’t in OR in undergrad. At most, an undergrad here would probably take 3, maybe 4 classes in OR fields. Most of the OR courses are graduate level. From what I understand, at most schools it’s like this as well. I’ve taken a couple of grad classes in OR and I don’t think they’re easier than CS courses (though I’ve only taken undergrad CS courses, so maybe I can’t really compare) but the undergrad IE/OR classes are generally easier than CS/EECS classes.</p>
<p>Honestly, though, OR has only a small connection to CS (they share some similar math concepts); OR does not revolve around computers and data structures and algorithms are not central to OR like they are to CS (with the exception of some algorithms).</p>
<p>The closest is math, but that’s a lot of work as well.</p>
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<p>The answer is “No”. </p>
<p>While there are similar majors, the demanding workload will not go away. It may get even more demanding.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that many CS programs TODAY have REDUCED the amount of REQUIRED math courses. Now CS only requires Calculus I, Calculus II and Linear Algebra. I am not counting Discrete Structures because it is a joint, co-department math/CS course at many schools. As far as the “similar” majors:</p>
<p>Operations Research - Calculus II and Linear Algebra are usually prerequisites just for the VERY FIRST operations research course. We won’t even go into the more advanced O.R. courses or stochastic O.R.</p>
<p>Computational Science - You may also hear this major be referred to as computational engineering or computational math. It is the area of applying computational techniques (using some computer science courses) to solve problems. Of the 4 “core CS” courses of Algorithms, Data Structures, Theory of Programming Languages and Operating Systems, you will need AT LEAST Algorithms and Data Structures background to do anything in computational science/math/engineering. Oh by the way, you will need all of those “computational” type technical courses like numerical analysis, numerical linear algebra or computational biology, all requiring several higher mathematics courses past the Calculus sequence or other science courses.</p>
<p>Computer Engineering - Take courses from both the CS program and the EE program. No need explaining its demanding workload.</p>
<p>Computational Physics - See Computational Science</p>
<p>Information Systems/Information Technology - This major takes SOME of the CS program but it usually considered not as demanding as a CS major. The problem with I.S./I.T. is that usually, one has to take some core CS courses to get “noticed” by employers and/or will lose out to CS majors for most jobs. I.S./I.T. is very dependent on the current economy. As long as CS majors are not facing a crunch, I.S./I.T. majors can flourish. Once the economy goes down and CS majors are willing to do I.S./I.T. jobs, then the I.S./I.T. major is the one who suffers.</p>
<p>I can’t think of anything similar to CS that is <em>easier</em> than CS. Operations and applied discrete math both seem significantly harder to me.</p>
<p>Then again, if we’re talking about the phony version of CS taught at a lot of Java schools, like an IT degree, then maybe you are talking about that.</p>