Curriculum | DATA ANALYTICS

The curriculum will help you develop skills required in all aspects of data analytics, with flexibility to allow different interests. Courses offered during each semester are listed below. Associated links with the course titles provide brief information about the course content, the mission and scope of the course, and the skills acquired by the participant upon the completion of the course. Toward fulfillment of the degree requirements, students are expected to select 4 courses out of 6 electives in the Spring term, and 2 courses (in addition to the Term Project) out of 3 electives in the Summer Term.

First day of classes for the Academic Year of 2025-2026: October 2025

Fall

Course Name
DA 501 Introduction to Data Analytics DA 501 Syllabus This course teaches the fundamental ideas to clean, manipulate, process and analyze data. The students will work on data analysis problems arising in various data-intensive applications. The course involves many in-class coding exercises where the students are expected to work on several case studies. Through these exercises, the course shall also serve as an introduction to data analytics and modern scientific computing with Python programming language.
DA 503 Applied Statistics DA 503 Syllabus This course is an applied statistics course with an emphasis on data analysis. In this course we will study several statistical modeling techniques and discuss real-life problems over which we’ll have a chance to apply statistical tools to learn from data. We will be covering some of the fundamental statistical methods like linear regression, principal component analysis, cross-validation and p-values. The lectures are designed to help the participants apply these techniques on large sets of data using a statistical programming language such as R or Python.
DA 505 Introduction to Data Modeling and Processing DA 505 Syllabus In this course, we will cover fundamental aspects of Data Management including traditional data management as well as new models for big data. We will start with conceptual data modelling (ER and UML models), then study relational model, and how conceptual models could be converted to relational model. We will cover SQL language for querying relational data. We will continue with more recent models such as key-value stores, document databases and graph databases. Students will do practical work on database systems such as MySQL, Cassandra, and MongoDB.
DA 507 Modeling and Optimization DA 507 Syllabus The aim of this course is to introduce the concept of analytical modelling, optimization problems and the fundamental properties of an optimization problem. Students will learn basics of transforming problems into analytical/quantitative/mathematical models, and how to formulate and solve simple mathematical models that represent optimization problems. Both exact algorithms and approximate algorithms, particularly heuristic techniques will be covered in order to form an understanding of algorithms and algorithm design to solve optimization problems. Throughout the course linear, nonlinear and integer optimization problems, network flow and network design problems will be the main focus with examples from the data science and data analytics domain.

Spring

Course Name
DA 512 Big Data Processing using Hadoop (Elective) DA 512 Syllabus This course will provide the essential background to start to develop programs that will run on Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). The course will also show the students the limitations of traditional programming techniques and how Hadoop addresses these problems. After learning the basics of a Hadoop Cluster and Hadoop Ecosystem, students will learn to write programs using Apache Spark framework and run these programs on a Hadoop Cluster.
DA 513 Time Series Analysis and Forecasting DA 513 Syllabus Time Series Forecasting is one of the most applied data science techniques across many disciplines, most notably in finance, in supply-chain management, and in production planning. This course is intended to provide a comprehensive introduction to forecasting methods used in the analysis and forecasting of Time Series. At the end of the course, students will be able to analyze and explore time series data, build and apply various Time Series models suitable for a wide range of business problems. PYthon programming language and libraries will be used in the analysis and forecasting of Time Series problems throughout the course.
DA 514 Machine Learning I (Elective) DA 514 Syllabus In this course, we will cover fundamental aspects of Machine Learning. We will start with fundamentals of machine learning, including different learning paradigms, regression and classification problems, evaluation methods, generalization and overfitting. We will then cover some of the fundamental machine learning techniques such as decision trees, Bayesian approaches, Naive Bayes classifier, and logistic regression, k-Nearest neighbor, and online learning algorithms. Besides understanding the basic theory behind the techniques, students are expected to apply them on different platforms like Weka or Matlab.
DA 518 Exploratory Data Analysis and Visualization (Elective) DA 518 Syllabus Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) is an approach to data analysis for summarizing and visualizing the important characteristics of a data set. EDA focuses on exploring data to understand the data’s underlying structure and variables, to develop intuition about the data set, and decide how it can be investigated with more formal statistical methods. EDA is distinct from Data Visualization in that EDA is done towards the beginning of analysis and data visualization is done towards the end to communicate one’s finding. This course particularly pays attention to the applied techniques to data visualization narratives. We will draw on case studies from the business world, industry to news media.
DA 517 Machine Learning II (Elective) DA 517 Syllabus In the scope of this course we will begin with data extraction, cleaning, and normalization to prepare the data for Data Mining Algorithms. We will then cover Data Mining techniques including association rule mining, sequential patterns, clustering, text mining. Students are expected to understand the fundamental theory behind each technique, as well as implementing them using an environment such as RapidMiner or Weka.
DA 516 Social Network Analysis (Elective) DA 516 Syllabus Different types of social networks and connectivity are a crucial part of the underlying models of the new generation of applications we use. These connections include people, places, activities, businesses, products, social and integrated business processes happening in personal and business networks or communities. In this course we will study different applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Foursquare, and discover different networks formed by the connectivity. We will introduce tools that will give us insight into how these networks function: We will introduce fundamentals of graph theory and discover how these graphs can be modeled and analyzed (Social Network Analysis). We will also study the interaction dynamics using game theory. Learning objectives are: Study different social applications and how they can be modeled. Understand the basics of graph theory. Understand and perform basic social network analysis Understand the basics of game theory Apply these concepts to model the Web and new social applications.
DA 515 Practical Case Studies in Data Analytics (Elective) DA 515 Syllabus This course aims at discussing the key principles of knowledge discovery process through various case studies arising from different application areas. The students are expected to learn the main steps to traverse when they face new data analytics problems. With each case study, the tools for cleaning, processing and altering the data shall be visited. A particular attention shall be given to data inspection, feature reduction and model selection. Each case study will be completed by a thorough discussion and interpretation of the results.
DA 522 Information Law and Data Ethics (Elective) DA 522 Syllabus Given the widespread distribution of data in today’s buısiness world, the legal and ethical issues related to the use of data have been, and will be, of critical importance in establishing a corporate policy. Within the framework of these legal and ethical issues, students will gain an understanding of the following concepts: private, confidential, anonymous and open data; private versus public data; data ownership and proprietary rights; intellectual property; overview of existing legal framework; constraints, rules and legislative procedure in access and use of data.
DA 525 Project Management and Business Communication (Elective) DA 525 Syllabus This course is intended to provide industry insight into the world of project management and business communication. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to have a clear understanding of the tasks and challenges that are fundamental to project management requirements. The course will also cover issues on team management and other aspects of project management on schedules, risks and resources for a successful project outcome. The second part of this course will concentrate on effective communication with team members, presentation techniques for a wide range of audiences and communicating results and recommendations to upper management and clients.
IT 542 Big Data Processing using Hadoop (Elective) IT 542 Syllabus This course will provide the essential background to start to develop programs that will run on Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). The course will also show the students the limitations of traditional programming techniques and how Hadoop addresses these problems. After learning the basics of a Hadoop Cluster and Hadoop Ecosystem, students will learn to write programs using Apache Spark framework and run these programs on a Hadoop Cluster.
DA 592 Term Project (Non-credit) All graduate students pursuing a non-thesis MSc. Program are required to complete a project. The project topic and contents are based on the interest and background of the student and are approved by the faculty member serving as the Project Supervisor. At the completion of the project, the student is required to submit a final report and present the project. The final report is to be approved by the Project Supervisor.

Courses offered in the past

Course Name
DA 519 Data and Systems (Elective) Strategy may be designed as a portfolio of options via which executives create a bundle of paths that connect where they are now to a sustainable region that they desire to be in the future. The design involves in setting and solving a set of rule-based and probabilistic problems that include both slow and fast variables. For slow variables, the available data sets may be meager and rare, while for fast variables, the data might be frequent and fat. It is, therefore, expedient to integrate system dynamics models which causally connect and monitor the variables at hand to statistical techniques that estimate the necessary parameters that go along with the model. Innovation planning of a toy, start-up technology firm and asset-liability management of a corporate entity will be investigated as case studies.
DA 520 Data Privacy and Security (Elective) This course will provide the basic understanding of security and privacy issues related to data analytics and processing. Firstly, a brief introduction to fundamentals of cryptographic primitives such as block ciphers, cryptographic hash functions, public key cryptosystems, message authentication codes, and digital signatures will be given. In addition, security applications widely used in industry such as SSL/TLS, IPSec, DNSSec, RADIUS will be introduced. Privacy issues will be addressed concerning data collection, storage, processing and publishing, especially types of data related to individuals. Finally, case studies will be hardening security in data management systems and computer networks.

Course Name

DA 519 Data and Systems (Elective)

DA 520 Data Privacy and Security (Elective)

The courses will be given by Sabancı University faculty members who work in many different areas of Data Analytics, together with senior executives, managers and leaders from related business areas to improve the knowledge-base and practical skills the participants need.

Language English