Data Science Foundations Tools and Techniques ― Core Skills for Quantitative Analysis With R and Git

This unique guide brings together all the skills you need to get started with data science -- one of the world’s fastest growing fields! Leading data science instructors Michael Freeman and Joel Ross start by guiding you through installing and configuring all the free open source software you’ll need to solve professional-level data science problems. Next, they introduce key concepts, show how to work with data, and build your understanding with practical examples. You’ll learn crucial R programming skills, and find easy-to-understand reference content to help you get the syntax right and troubleshoot your own code. Step by step, you’ll learn through practical exercises that can be combined into complete data science projects. Everything’s focused on practical application, so you can get real results, fast!

• Understand the field of data science (and why it’s growing so fast)
• Install and configure R, RStudio, git, GitHub, and VSCode
• Keep track of your work with Git and GitHub
• Use simple Markdown code to style documents for easier understanding
• Work with the R programming language and its objects
• “Wrangle” data into shape for processing
• Create R visualizations with ggplot and Plotly
• Publish with RMarkdown
• Build interactive applications with Shiny
• And much more

Michael Freeman is a senior lecturer at the University of Washington Information School, where he teaches courses in data science, interactive data visualization, and web development. Prior to his teaching career, he worked as a data visualization specialist and research fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. There, he performed quantitative global health research and built a variety of interactive visualization systems to help researchers and the public explore global health trends. Michael is interested in applications of data visualization to social justice, and holds a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Washington.

Joel Ross is a senior lecturer at the University of Washington Information School, where he teaches courses in web development, mobile application development, software architecture, and introductory programming. While his primary focus is on teaching, his research interests include games and gamification, pervasive systems, computer science education, and social computing. He has also done research on crowdsourcing systems, human computation, and encouraging environmental sustainability. Joel earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in information and computer sciences from the University of California, Irvine.