DATA 101, Spring 2018
Kris Shaffer, Ph.D., University of Mary Washington.
Welcome to DATA 101 ― an overview to the field of data science. Classes begin January 2018!
Data Science is a rapidly growing, terribly fascinating field with as many definitions as practitioners. Generally, data science is considered to be the intersection of computation (coding), statistics (analysis), and some area of domain expertise (business, social media, linguistics, even music).
But depending on who you are and where you work ― even what part of the country/world you work in ― your job may center on data visualization, machine learning, database administration, even web development. And, unfortunately, some data scientists/data analysts still spend most of their time in Excel...
This course will serve as an overview to aspects of all of these areas (except Excel), as well as an introduction to programming in the Python scripting language.
See the Getting Started page to see what you need for the first day of classes. And feel free to peruse the Syllabus.