Teaching Data Science

TL;DR

This paper describes an introductory data science course that covers fundamental topics like data handling, visualization, and statistical analysis using Python, aimed at students without prior programming experience.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive, no-prerequisite data science curriculum that integrates diverse topics and shares lessons learned for future course development.

Findings

Students gained foundational data science skills.

The course successfully engaged beginners with no prior programming.

Lessons learned inform future curriculum improvements.

Abstract

We describe an introductory data science course, entitled Introduction to Data Science, offered at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The course introduced general programming concepts by using the Python programming language with an emphasis on data preparation, processing, and presentation. The course had no prerequisites, and students were not expected to have any programming experience. This introductory course was designed to cover a wide range of topics, from the nature of data, to storage, to visualization, to probability and statistical analysis, to cloud and high performance computing, without becoming overly focused on any one subject. We conclude this article with a discussion of lessons learned and our plans to develop new data science courses.