Data Analysis and Visualization

One goal I have is for students to be able to obtain data from different sources and know how to get that data into a form that they can work with. A motivating source of data is what the large companies like Google, Facebook, Netflix collect on each of us. Google: Download your data Facebook: Download your facebook data Netflix: Viewing activity I'm struggling with how to have students explore this data and at the same time not feel pressured to share the data with either me or the rest of the class.

In the Spring 2020 semester, I'm teaching a special topics course here at Whitman College called Data Analysis and Visualization. The course will be somewhat different from a traditional class in our department. My hope is to have students grappling with real datasets while we learn the content of the course. Students will almost always be working in groups. In addition to my in-class presentation, students will be enrolled in a free class courtesy of DataCamp and will complete relevant modules from the DataCamp curriculum. They will also be free to search the web (and encouraged) to find examples and other tutorials to help them along their way. To emphasize that the web is a two-way street, I'm having students keep activity logs on publicly accessible platforms (like Blogger). Not only are the logs a way of helping students to organize the new information, ideas and skills they are acquiring from the class, the logs are also a way of giving back to the web examples, ideas...