Course info & FAQs. Click the titles for more.
Should I take this course?
General description This course is open to graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Chicago. Usually, students who take this course come from a wide range of departments such as Data Science, Sociology, Psychology, Political Science, etc.
Course Expectations
Complete the readings Each class will have assigned readings. They will be posted on this website under the lecture for that day. I will assume you have done the readings before coming to class.
Readings & Resources
Required textbook The main textbook for this course is the 2nd edition of R for Data Science by Garrett Grolemund and Hadley Wickham. The book is freely accessible online. Completing the exercises in the book?
Assignments & Assessment
Assignments Required work: Students will complete a series of programming assignments linked to class materials. Specifically, there will be six homework assignment and a final project. Homework 1 is evaluated on a Pass/Fail basis.
How to ask for help
15-minute rule You will likely stumble in this course, you will get confused, not understand how to perform a task, or why your code is generating an error. That’s normal, and it is part of the learning process.
Why R?
This page provides background info on R and why this course teaches it. For info on on software installation, see the Setup page. Open-source R is open-source software, which means using it is completely free.
What are Git & GitHub?
Git and GitHub are powerful tools for managing and sharing your work and code. They are often used together, but they are not the same thing: Git is a version control system, GitHub is a cloud-based hosting service that lets you manage your Git repositories.
What is the Shell?
The shell (or bash or terminal) is a program on your computer whose job is to run other programs, rather than do calculations itself. The shell is a very old program and in a time before the mouse it was the only way to interact with a computer.