Operations research/data analysis from a non-math/cs background

[jbecker]

I've taken a rather winding academic path over the last few years. I attended a top university and got my degree in organic chemistry mostly because I enjoyed the puzzles. I was never very good at chemistry (3.0GPA in chem at a school where there's pretty solid grade inflation), but I also had a few semesters where I had a hard time taking school very seriously. During my time as an undergrad, I took one CS course a loved it. I probably should have changed courses at that point, but I felt I was boxed in a too far along the chem path to change directions so dramatically. I decided at the end of my time in school to get a master's in education policy. I did extremely well in that program (all As) and currently work as a research specialist in that field.

What I love about policy is the opportunity to have an impact on people's lives through using information. I love thinking through incentive structures and the potential impact of a policy, but even more than that I'm finding that my real joy is playing with data. Unfortunately, my graduate program was meant for a wide inter-disciplinary pull so I only got the very basics of data analysis and statistics from a very applied perspective.

In the end, I find myself with 3 semesters of calculus (two taken in college), a semester of linear algebra I barely survived (at the time I was taking it as a requirement and couldn't get motivated because I didn't understand the applications), and a semester of object-oriented programming. Throw on a very basic stats class for social scientists and a program evaluation class that was more about being able to digest quasi-experimental research rather than produce it, and I'm not running on a whole lot of expertise here.

Looking forward, I'm thinking that I really want to expand my statistics and programming skills so I could do far more complex data analysis on larger data sets. I want to have the time to really learn the depths of STATA, learn R, play with processing, and actually need to use programming/scripting to deal with massive amounts of data.

Truthfully, I'm feeling I may have missed the boat on this passion. I'm not sure exactly what kind of programs are out there to deepen my knowledge in these areas and whether anything would accept me with such a thin background in the subject. When I'm motivated and passionate about something I can be extremely effective at learning on my own but I really need dedicated time and space-- i.e. in school it was easy for me to really dig into one class and learn a lot on my own but out in the "real world" I find it nearly impossible to set aside time to really teach myself.

So I guess I'm looking for a lot of advice. First, are there programs out there that cater towards this kind of work? Second, do any of them have the flexibility to accept people with less background knowledge or even just cater toward career changers so that I have some opportunity to play catch up? Third, if no programs would really work for someone with my background, what course work should I be taking to get prepared? And fourth, if I need to take additional course work at the undergraduate level, does any one have recommendations on the best way to do this while working on the cheap? My local community college offers nothing at the right level for me to build a better background before applying and I have no experience with online/distance-learning or other techniques here.

Thanks!

Jason