Let us know you’re interested!
Why Data Science
Data is everywhere. In every career path, academic discipline, and even everyday life, data is the driving force of the modern world. It’s no exaggeration then to say that a competency in data science opens you up to a brand new toolbox of untold discovery. We’ve worked on projects across countless disciplines including automated biodiversity assays, economic forecasting/algorithmic trading, and even AI powered music composition. The beauty of data science is that no matter what field you’re interested in or what job you want to pursue, data science elevates your ability to perform at the highest level. Data science is the quantitative backbone of contemporary inquiry, and getting a head start on tangible data skills empowers you to confidently tackle the challenges of higher education and beyond.
Course Logistics
The course will meet three times a week on MWF virtually (via Zoom) starting on Fall 2023 (date TBD), and ending around the Holiday Break. Friday’s section is devoted to a lab that will apply the material in a practical manner. While we want to accept all students that are interested, we want to keep the course small so that we, and students, get the most out of this experience. This is a paid course; the course will cost $200 a week. If this is a financial burden please don’t hesitate to reach out. We don’t want money to be a barrier for anyone.
About This Course
After four years of college and looking back to where we started, we realized that data science is a discipline that is ubiquitous. Better yet, we firmly believe that powerful basic principles are not inaccessible to high school students. We wanted to make this course to teach real, tangible practices that are not only used in the classroom of top universities, but are found in most if not all successful businesses today. We are truly excited to share with you a curriculum that we have developed combining our education and industry experience such that anyone, regardless of programming or technical background can get something out of and enjoy the beauty of data science. This course will start with programming fundamentals in python, cover best practices in handling and visualizing large datasets, explore the power of supervised machine learning, and conclude with a guided project where the student takes on a real world dataset and draws meaningful conclusions. We’re excited to share what we’ve learned and arm all of you with a brand new arsenal of skills we wish we knew in high school!
Resources
Inferential Thinking. An excellent open source data science textbook used in Berkeley classes.
Learn Python the Hard Way. This is a great python resource for those who learn by doing, doing, doing.
Automate the Boring Stuff. This is a great practical book to practice python while automating some common tasks.
Documentation!!
Assignments
This class has short weekly labs (60-90 minutes) designed to test key concepts and stimulate learning. These assignments will be autograded, so code should be clean and effective. We recognize that this is the first foray that many of you will have into programming (much less data science), so rest assured we will provide plenty of help in session as well as virtual office hours for specific questions. The point of these labs is to learn not to be stressed! So please ask for help if you need it!!