2020-02-27 12:28:09

Prelude

Preliminaries

Announcements

  • Data science talk series
  • QuantDev group in HDFS (meet Wednesday’s at noon)
  • Social Data Analytics (SoDA)

Today’s agenda

  • Introductions
  • Introduction to the course
  • Needs/interests assessment
  • Why trust science?
  • Setting up your computational environment

Introductions


Your turn

Introduction to the course

Schedule

Evaluation

Tips for success

  • Code every day
  • Choose specific, meaningful goals
  • Document (and celebrate) your progress
  • Use a password manager (LastPass, 1Password)

Needs/interests assessment

Who should learn to code?

Why learn to code?

  • It’s fun
  • It’s useful
  • Let computers do the boring, tedious, detail-oriented stuff
  • Reproducible workflows
  • Improve your job prospects

Languages you might know

  • MS Excel scripting
  • SPSS syntax
  • *nix shell scripting
  • HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript
  • MATLAB
  • LaTex, SQL
  • Java, C, C++
  • R, Python

Let’s leaRn some R!

Why trust science?

Do doctors really know what they are talking about when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when our politicians don’t?

– Naomi Oreskes, Why Trust Science?

Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)

Setting up your computational environment