Welcome! This is a course that will change your life (really!). This course will empower you to understand and use data in a principled way to better explain, make decisions in, and predict the world.
Specifically, by the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Download and make sense of many publicly available datasets in your area(s) of interest
- Conduct original statistical analyses of data to test your own hypotheses about the world as well as draw meaningful, transparent, and scientific inferences from them
- Evaluate the quality, usefulness, and limitations of many datasets
- Test for yourself many data-driven conclusions or arguments made in the news
- Use data to make informed predictions about possible outcomes in the world
In the process, you’ll learn how:
- To program in Python, a widely used data science computer language
- To conduct a wide range of statistical tests
- To understand the various buzzwords surrounding data science, like machine learning and deep learning, artificial intelligence, algorithms, big data, and more.
We do not expect you to have any prior calculus or computer programming experience. The only prerequisite is high school algebra.
Overall, this course will transform you from a passive consumer of conclusions about data that other people have made to an informed, empowered, and critical reader and producer of data-driven insights. It will also set you up for further advanced study in data science. Data science is also now practically a prerequisite for many professions, so this may be a powerful investment in your career.
