Students are introduced to the importance of data science through two real-life examples: the Space Shuttle Challenger and Starbucks Tech in a Cup. They will learn basic data science terminology, processes and definitions. Later, they will get hands-on experience with data by working on a data set involving concession sales. This will allow them to develop their skills on Excel, learning useful functions and commands using a concession data set.

A graph often gives you a better understanding of a variable than looking at raw data. Students will learn the importance of data visualization, and how to build and interpret graphs for categorical and quantitative variables. With Excel, they will summarize data and see how different types of data and variables entail different organization/visualization methods. The module’s video uses Halloween data collected from trick-or-treaters in Cincinnati, OH.

Students will study how to accurately describe three key features of univariate data sets. They will learn how to identify and evaluate the impact of missing data and outliers. Some measures of bivariate data will be introduced. The problem of “lying with numbers” will be discussed. At this point, students will have acquired the knowledge necessary to identify situations in which statistics were used to misleadingly.

In the fourth module, students will learn how to create professional and interactive visualizations using Tableau software. This is a very practical module in which students will be introduced to the Tableau interface, in order to build sophisticated charts and create calculated fields using the US_flights data set, which involves U.S. airline flights from 2010 and 2011.

Students will learn about dashboards and all they imply. They will learn how to create an interactive dashboard, and asked to evaluate different types and identify their key characteristics. The second part of this module is dedicated to the art of storytelling. Here, Tableau is used to create story points for particular messages. A full description of the final assignment is also provided.