New Developments at JPSM 

FCSM December 2015 

Richard Valliant, Universities of Michigan & Maryland 

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Where we come from 

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1992 Noncredit short courses

1993 Master program offered in DC

1999 Certificate and Citation programs

2000 PhD program

2003 Program in Economic Measurement

2015 International Program

in Survey and Data Science

http://jointprogram.umd.edu/home
Some facts about JPSM & MPSM graduates 

JPSM MPSM 

Degree Social 

science 

Statistical 

science 

Total Total 

MS 152 85 237 87 

PhD 12 14 26 19 

Total 164 99 263 106 

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Non-Degree Programs 

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Short Courses 

• Short Course employer totals since 1993: 

• Federal Agencies: 7,225 

• Private: 1,462 

• Other: 4,602 

• Total: 13,289 

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Where grads work 

Current Job % 

Federal 57 

Other 17 

Private Government 

Contractor 

26 

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2014 Income Distribution by Degree 

6%

18%

35%

16%

25%

0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40

Less than $50,000

$50,000 ‐ $74,999

$75,000 ‐ $99,999

$100,000 ‐ $124,999

$125,000 or more

MS 2014 income

11%

21%

37%

31%

0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40

Less than $75,000

$75,000 ‐ $99,999

$100,000 ‐ $124,999

$125,000 or more

PhD 2014 income

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A New World of Data 

• Amount of digital data growing fast

• Data from satellites, sensors, transactions, administrative

processes, social media, and smartphones.

• Characterized by high volume, high velocity, and high variety

• Hope is to gain insights from these data for different areas

such as

• Health and crime prevention

• Planning of infrastructures

• Business decisions

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Data quality continues to be an issue 

New/different types of data generated

as by‐product (e.g., smartphones, social

media, satellites)

Fundamental changes in collection,

availability, integration and

dissemination of data

Paradigm shift for those who in the past

relied primarily on survey research

Lack of people with skills to collect data,

build modern surveys and handle data

veracity http://www.rosebt.com/blog/data‐veracity

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Skills and methods from survey 

methodology still apply 

•Questionnaire design 

•Data collection modes 

•Sampling and inference 

•Total error (or quality) perspective 

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Revised curriculum 

• New degree and certificate programs planned 

• Curriculum broadened beyond just survey methodology 

• Online courses introduced 

• New emphasis on analysis of big data and data science 

• In Spring 2015 a new course taught on Big Data for Federal 

Agencies 

• Covered sources of these data and analysis techniques 

• More advanced big data class taught in Fall 2015. 

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International Program in Survey and 

Data Science 

• Partnership with Mannheim University in Germany

• Courses taught completely online

• Pre‐recorded lectures

• Weekly discussion sessions

• 18 credit certificates in Survey Methodology and Survey Statistics

• 30 credit Masters in Professional Studies (planned)

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Format 

Each week set of videos

(prerecorded)

Lectures are broken into easily

digestible sessions to help students

to better focus on the material

Engage with the material at their

own pace

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New Courses 

• Big Data—database concepts; data visualization; GIS; APIs & uses of

social media; networks; data linkage; intro to machine learning & text

analysis

• Fundamentals of Computing and Data Display—Software for data

management and analysis; simulation studies; Exploratory Data

Analysis (EDA) / visualization tools; Latex vs. PowerPoint; principles of

displaying data)

• Programming (Python, Hadoop, NOSQL, MapReduce)

• Machine Learning

• Advanced Modeling

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