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Activity Number: 678
Type: Invited
Date/Time: Thursday, August 4, 2016 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
Abstract #318439 View Presentation
Title: Teaching Data Science Skills in an Introductory CS Course
Author(s): Olaf Hall-Holt*
Companies: St. Olaf College
Keywords: undergraduate curriculum ; statistical computing ; computer science ; data science
Abstract:

Thanks to an innovative collaboration with statisticians, we have been teaching a `statistics-infused' introductory undergraduate computer science course for about four years. This course provides a solid introduction to R and Python (how do these languages actually work?), experience with acquiring data from multiple sources (including unformatted text files, web pages, and relational databases), and a taste of datavis and machine learning (with accompanying projects). The course has no prerequisites other than calculus and is always oversubscribed. Course materials, including all the homeworks and projects, are freely available on-line. In our presentation, we will describe our approach to helping students become confident in using R specifically, and in undertaking their own computing-related projects generally, so that they are more `can do' in their subsequent courses and careers.


Authors who are presenting talks have a * after their name.

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