Data Science & Research
Course Description:
Data Science is a 12-week course for students interested in applying computational techniques and statistics to understand a diversity of real-world questions through data, including disease networks, music, political elections, gene expression, and more! Students will learn the syntax, structure, and packages of the data science language R; explore the theory of and apply various statistical methods to analyze data; and design, conduct, and present a mini-research project applying R to investigate a real-world issue. Students will gain a strong foundation in the popular software R; exercise creativity, collaboration and critical thinking skills by designing and presenting research; explore the basics of research presentation and paper writing in the software LaTeX; and submit their final reports for publication in Illuminate.
Course objectives:
Develop a mastery of fundamental R syntax (loops, data types, data storage types), packages (tidyverse, ggplot, dplyr, Mass, etc.), data manipulation in dplyr, and visualize data in ggplot
Learn to clean and manipulate datasets, construct boxplots and correlation matrices, and explore a number of statistical tests and heatmap techniques to analyze and visualize data.
Collaborate to construct a real-world dataset on an issue of your choice. Test your own hypotheses by investigating correlations and significant landmarks within your data!
Course highlights:
Design, conduct, and orally present a data-based, computational research project on a topic of your choice to compete for publication in Illuminate!
Explore the structure of research papers and journals, and learn to write research papers and cite literature through LaTeX!
Collaborate in teams to collect, analyze, and visualize data for weekly custom-made exercises and challenges!
Interact casually with your instructor and make lifelong friends with peers through the Data Science Discord server!
Class Times: Tuesdays from 6PM - 7PM ET
Length: October 19 - January 11 (12 weeks)
Recommended Prerequisites: Algebra I
Grade Range: 7+
