This article is an introduction of 5 courses in Data Science Specialization from Coursera, developed and taught by leading professors. Coursera is an educational technology company that offers massive open online courses (MOOCs).
This Specialization, created by Johns Hopkins University, covers the concepts and tools you’ll need throughout the entire data science pipeline, from asking the right kinds of questions to making inferences and publishing results. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll apply the skills learned by building a data product using real-world data. At completion, students will have a portfolio demonstrating their mastery of the material.
Here are 5 courses you can take:
The Data Scientist’s Toolbox
Engagement : 1-4 hours/week
About the course:
In this course you will get an introduction to the main tools and ideas in the data scientist’s toolbox. The course gives an overview of the data, questions, and tools that data analysts and data scientists work with. There are two components to this course. The first is a conceptual introduction to the ideas behind turning data into actionable knowledge. The second is a practical introduction to the tools that will be used in the program like version control, markdown, git, GitHub, R, and RStudio.
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Getting and Cleaning Data
About the course:
Before you can work with data you have to get some. This course will cover the basic ways that data can be obtained. The course will cover obtaining data from the web, from APIs, from databases and from colleagues in various formats. It will also cover the basics of data cleaning and how to make data “tidy”. Tidy data dramatically speed downstream data analysis tasks. The course will also cover the components of a complete data set including raw data, processing instructions, codebooks, and processed data. The course will cover the basics needed for collecting, cleaning, and sharing data.
Exploratory Data Analysis
About the course:
This course covers the essential exploratory techniques for summarizing data. These techniques are typically applied before formal modeling commences and can help inform the development of more complex statistical models. Exploratory techniques are also important for eliminating or sharpening potential hypotheses about the world that can be addressed by the data. We will cover in detail the plotting systems in R as well as some of the basic principles of constructing data graphics. We will also cover some of the common multivariate statistical techniques used to visualize high-dimensional data.
Reproducible Research
Engagement : 4-9 hours/week
About the course:
This course focuses on the concepts and tools behind reporting modern data analyses in a reproducible manner. Reproducible research is the idea that data analyses, and more generally, scientific claims, are published with their data and software code so that others may verify the findings and build upon them. The need for reproducibility is increasing dramatically as data analyses become more complex, involving larger datasets and more sophisticated computations. Reproducibility allows for people to focus on the actual content of a data analysis, rather than on superficial details reported in a written summary. In addition, reproducibility makes an analysis more useful to others because the data and code that actually conducted the analysis are available. This course will focus on literate statistical analysis tools which allow one to publish data analyses in a single document that allows others to easily execute the same analysis to obtain the same results.
Statistical Inference
About the course:
Statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions about populations or scientific truths from data. There are many modes of performing inference including statistical modeling, data oriented strategies and explicit use of designs and randomization in analyses. Furthermore, there are broad theories (frequentists, Bayesian, likelihood, design based, …) and numerous complexities (missing data, observed and unobserved confounding, biases) for performing inference. A practitioner can often be left in a debilitating maze of techniques, philosophies and nuance. This course presents the fundamentals of inference in a practical approach for getting things done. After taking this course, students will understand the broad directions of statistical inference and use this information for making informed choices in analyzing data.
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For more explanation about the courses and other courses click here.
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Additional Reading
- What statisticians think about data scientists
- Data Science Compared to 16 Analytic Disciplines
- 10 types of data scientists
- 91 job interview questions for data scientists
- 50 Questions to Test True Data Science Knowledge
- 24 Uses of Statistical Modeling
- 21 data science systems used by Amazon to operate its business
- Top 20 Big Data Experts to Follow (Includes Scoring Algorithm)
- 5 Data Science Leaders Share their Predictions for 2016 and Beyond
- 50 Articles about Hadoop and Related Topics
- 10 Modern Statistical Concepts Discovered by Data Scientists
- Top data science keywords on DSC
- 4 easy steps to becoming a data scientist
- 22 tips for better data science
- How to detect spurious correlations, and how to find the real ones
- 17 short tutorials all data scientists should read (and practice)
- High versus low-level data science
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