Overview

Who is this course for?

There are two answers to this question, depending on whether you are a learner or educator. (And really, aren’t we all both?)

Learner persona

If you are a learner who is interested in making sense of (sometimes messy) data and who

  • has little to no background in data science, statistics, or programming, or
  • has been using R for a while but wants to modernize their skills,

the materials in this course are for you! The content is definitely newcomer friendly, however you should be willing to ask questions and dive into the documentation of the packages we introduce.

Note that course prerequisites are not listed, and this is not an oversight. The course is designed to be accessible to new learners at the undergraduate level and above, though adventurous learners at the high school level might also enjoy these materials.

Educator persona

If you are an educator who is / will be teaching data science at the introductory level and who

  • has been teaching with R for a while but wants to update bits of or completely overhaul their teaching materials, or
  • is new to teaching (with) R but otherwise comfortable with the basics of the language

the course materials provided here are for you.

The course is designed to be taught at the introductory undergraduate level and above, however it is possible to re-purpose much of this content at the high school level as well.

Note that a specific discipline is not mentioned, and this is not an oversight. Many disciplines are offering their version of introductory data science nowadays, and we think more the merrier! The course draws on data sets primarily from the social sciences and humanities, and a few from natural sciences.

Where does this course fit in a curriculum?

This course can serve as a first course in an undergraduate data science or statistics curriculum. It can also serve as an introductory course in a graduate program, and depending on the background of the students, earlier topics can be covered more quickly to make room for more content at the end of the course.

What is in the box?

Student facing materials:

  • slides: 30 slide decks, each to be covered roughly in a 75 minute class session
  • application exercises: 10 application exercises
  • assignments: 8 homework assignments
  • labs: 12 guided hands on exercises for students requiring minimal introduction from the instructor
  • exams: 2 sample take-home exams and keys
  • project: Final project assignment
  • tutorials: 8 interactive learnr tutorials

Educator facing materials:

  • Computing infrastructure:

    • RStudio: Choosing between RStudio Cloud, RStudio Server Pro, or local RStudio IDE and how to structure your course using each option
    • Git/GitHub: How to use Git and GitHub as the learning management system for your course as well as a collaborative platform for your students and how to use GitHub Classroom and ghclass for setting up your course
    • Creating learnr modules
    • Using blogdown to create your course website

  • Pedagogical tips

Why R?

Unlike most other software designed specifically for teaching statistics, R is free and open source, powerful, flexible, and relevant beyond the introductory statistics classroom. Arguments against using and teaching R at especially the introductory statistics level generally cluster around the following two points: teaching programming in addition to statistical concepts is challenging and the command line is more intimidating to beginners than the graphical user interface (GUI) most point-and-click type software offer.

One solution for these concerns is to avoid hands-on data analysis completely. If we do not ask our students to start with raw data and instead always provide them with small, tidy rectangles of data then there is never really a need for statistical software beyond spreadsheet or graphing calculator. This is not what we want in a modern statistics course and is a disservice to students.

Another solution is to use traditional point-and-click software for data analysis. The typical argument is that the GUI is easier for students to learn and so they can spend more time on statistical concepts. However, this ignores the fact that these software tools also have nontrivial learning curves. In fact, teaching specific data analysis tasks using such software often requires lengthy step-by-step instructions, with annotated screenshots, for navigating menus and other interface elements. Also, it is not uncommon that instructions for one task do not easily extend to another. Replacing such instructions with just a few lines of R code actually makes the instructional materials more concise and less intimidating.

Many in the statistics education community are in favor of teaching R (or some other programming language, like Python) in upper level statistics courses, however the value of using R in introductory statistics courses is not as widely accepted. We acknowledge that this addition can be burdensome, however we would argue that learning a tool that is applicable beyond the introductory statistics course and that enhances students’ problem solving skills is a burden worth bearing.

Why not language X?

There are a number of other great programming tools out there that can also be used for introducing students to data science, e.g. Python. These materials are designed for teaching data science with R. A great example of a similar curriculum using Python is Data 8 designed at University of California, Berkeley.

Why RStudio?

The RStudio IDE includes a viewable environment, a file browser, data viewer, and a plotting pane, which makes it less intimidating than the bare R shell. Additionally, since it is a full fledged IDE, it also features integrated help, syntax highlighting, and context-aware tab completion, which are all powerful tools that help flatten the learning curve. RStudio also has direct integration with other critically important tools for teaching computing best practices and reproducible research.

Our recommendation is that students access the RStudio IDE through a centralized RStudio server instance or using RStudio Cloud. We describe this in further detail in the Infrastructure section.

It should be noted that we do not want to completely dissuade students from downloading and installing R and RStudio locally, we just do not want it to be a prerequisite for getting started. We have found that teaching personal setup is best done progressively throughout a semester, usually via one-on-one interactions during office hours or after class. Our goal is that all students will be able to continue using R in any setting.

Learn more

If you would like to learn more about the design philosophy behind the course as well as implementation details, we recommend the following paper that is freely available online.

Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel & Victoria Ellison (In press), A fresh look at introductory data science, Journal of Statistics Education. doi.org/10.1080/10691898.2020.1804497.