Schedule

Week 1: August 17

Before the first class, please read and follow the instructions in the “Getting Started” chapter of Preceptor’s Primer for Bayesian Data Science. This will get you set up with all of the tools we will be using in class. If you are having technical problems, please post a question on Discord or email me directly.

Monday, August 17: “Getting Started” from the tutorial.helpers package and “Workspace” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Tuesday, August 18: “Workflow” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Wednesday, August 19: “Code” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Thursday, August 20: “Quarto” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Friday, August 21: Final Project Milestone 1 — Write down a topic which you find interesting to explore for your final project. Try to be more specific than just “baseball” or “stocks.”

Introduction to the tools we use for doing data science. Our goal is to create nice looking webpages with some interesting data/graphics in class by Friday.

Failure to submit your tutorial answers will result in you being removed from the course. It is not fair to your fellow students, with whom you will be working in small groups, for you to be unprepared.

Week 2: August 23

Sunday, August 23: “Antigravity” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Monday, August 24: “R4DS 1” from the misc.tutorials package.
Tuesday, August 25: “R4DS 2” from the misc.tutorials package.
Wednesday, August 26: “Terminal 1” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Thursday, August 27: “R4DS 3” from the misc.tutorials package.
Friday, August 28: Final Project Milestone 2 — Research publicly available data sets related to your topic. Write a few sentences describing a data set (or data sets) which you think might make for a good final project.

The main goal this week is to get better at using AI for data science. NCF provides for the use of Antigravity, the main AI coding tool from Google. However, please be reasonable! Do not go crazy. Use Antigravity for your class work, tutorial assignments and final projects. Do not ask it to create a duplicate of TikTok for your use.

The tutorials associated with R for Data Science (2e) by Hadley Wickham, Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, and Garrett Grolemund introduce you to key parts of the R language, our primary tool for data science. However, my main goal is to teach you about infrastructure, not code, because AI writes our code for us. So, we will also play around with Python, the other computer language most commonly used for data science.

Week 3: August 30

Sunday, August 30: “Terminal 2” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Monday, August 31: “R4DS 4” from the misc.tutorials package.
Tuesday, September 1: “GitHub Introduction” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Wednesday, September 2: “R4DS 5” from the misc.tutorials package.
Thursday, September 3: “GitHub Advanced” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Friday, September 4: Final Project Milestone 3 — Make a repo called milestone-3. Create a Quarto document called project.qmd. Write some sentences about your plans for your final project. Include some thoughts about interesting variables in your data. Use quarto publish to put project.html on the web. Submit the URL for that page.

In addition to finishing the tutorials associated with R for Data Science (2e) by Hadley Wickham, Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, and Garrett Grolemund, we will continue our education in computer infrastructure, with a focus on the command line and on Git/GitHub.

We will send out a gratitude email.

Week 4: September 6

No class Monday because of the Labor Day holiday. No assignment is due Sunday for the same reason.

Monday, September 7: “Websites 1” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Tuesday, September 8: “Analyzing US Census Data” from the misc.tutorials package.
Wednesday, September 9: “Websites 2” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Thursday, September 10: “Terminal 3” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Friday, September 11: Final Project Milestone 4 — Make a repo called milestone-4. Create a Quarto website. You should download some data and make at least one nice looking graphic, using that data, and put the graphic on the index.html home page. Submit the URL for the website.

Week 5: September 13

Sunday, September 13: “Devcontainers” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Monday, September 14: “Baseball” from the misc.tutorials package.
Tuesday, September 15: “Our Codespace Starter” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Wednesday, September 16: “The Devcontainer Dockerfile” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Thursday, September 17: “Movies” from the misc.tutorials package.
Friday, September 18: Final Project Milestone 5 — Submit the URL for a very rough draft of the website for your final project. The underlying repo should have a sensible name — like stock-returns or whatever — not my-final-project. A sensible repo will generate a reasonable URL. Can you change your project from what you have discussed so far? Of course! You can change your project as much or as little as you want.

We have two goals this week. First, we continue our infrastructure education via a collection of tutorials which explain the tools behind our codespace-starter repo. You need to be able to create your own Codespaces and to customize them.

Second, you will create a very rough draft of your final project. Use AI for all aspects of your project. You will show this draft to the people you meet with from Career Engagement & Opportunity and from the Student Success Center next week. (You will meet with one person from each of those offices.)

You must schedule these two appointments yourself. The purpose of these appointments is to discuss your final project. Both NCF staff members will ask you the sorts of questions which an organization interviewing you would ask. You need a draft of your final project, including the website, to show off. Bring your laptop to these meetings.

We will also send out a networking email.

Week 6: September 20

Sunday, September 20: “Your Starter” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Monday, September 21: “Dotfiles” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Tuesday, September 22: “OpenRouter” from the vscode.tutorials package.
Wednesday, September 23: “Ducks” from the misc.tutorials package.
Thursday, September 24: “Models And Money” from the vscode.tutorials package. This is the last assigned tutorial.
Friday, September 25: Final Project Milestone 6 — Write a paragraph about the two NCF staff members who you met with to discuss the draft of the final project. What were their names? When/where did you meet? What suggestions did they make? You do not need to evaluate the quality of their suggestions or describe what you have done in response.

Week 7: September 27

Friday, October 2: Final Project Milestone 7 — Submit the URL for your final project. The URL might be different from last week. You may have made major changes in response to audience feedback. Or maybe very little has changed. Either way, make sure that it is consistent with our checklist. The goal is for your project to be the first entry in your professional portfolio. Make it excellent!

You will present your final project twice: Once over Zoom to your family and friends from back home and once in class. The exact scheduling is TBA. You must invite at least one person to each presentation. I hope that you will invite your parents and grandparents to the Zoom presentation but that is not required. You must, however, invite someone. For the in-class presentation, you must invite someone from campus. You may invite however many people you like. If you play on an NCF team, I reserve the right to require you to invite your coach.