📖 EEB125H1S: Introductory Computation and Data Science for the Life and Physical Sciences
📖 GGR274H1S: Introductory Computation and Data Science for the Social Sciences
👉 Data and the tools of data science are increasingly woven into our daily lives, including mapping relationships via social media, capturing individuals’ speech and action via sensors, tracking movement across space, shaping police and security policy via “predictive policing,” analyzing genomes to improve decisions in fields such as conservation and agriculture, identifying health risks and outcomes from patient data, and much more.
👉 No. You don’t need your own laptop, but it may be more convenient. You won’t have to install any software or need a fancy computer to be able to fully participate.
👉 The same core Data Science content are covered in both courses, but each is tailored to students through a combination of scientific or social sciences applications and themes.
👉 This is a data science course, not a computer science or statistics course, so scientific and social science questions will be front and centre, yet you will be learning how to answer questions and communicate answers using data. This process involves writing computer programs in Python to implement data science tools and be able to understand how to interpret and communicate statistical information. Both courses will weave together disciplines and their implications in a powerful and interesting way. Some of these topics are quite different from what appears in a typical introductory course from either computer science or statistics. Both courses will be co-taught by a team of disciplinary experts in social sciences and sciences, computer science, and statistical sciences.
👉 No. The course is designed for students who are new to statistics and programming, although students with experience in one or the other may still learn a lot. Which breadth requirement does EEB125/GGR274 satisfy? The Physical and Mathematical Universes (5)
👉 No. EEB125/GGR274 teaches statistics and computer programming differently from most high school or university courses.
👉 Python.
👉 Yes. A great introduction to computer programming is CSC108, or CSC148 if you have some programming experience. There are several courses at UofT that offer an introduction to statistics including: GGR270, STA220, STA130, STA288, ECO220, EEB225.
👉 The courses are developed and taught by an interdisciplinary team of faculty. Professors Paul Gries (Computer Science), Caroline Parins-Fukuchi (EEB125), Nathan Taback (Statistical Sciences/Computer Science), and Michael Widener (GGR274).
👉 The 100-/200-level designators are signals, not rules: these courses do not have prerequisites, and can be taken by students from any year of study. In the Life and Physical Sciences, students usually have more room in their first-year schedules than in second-year or upper years. In the Social Sciences, students usually start studying quantitative aspects of their disciplines after having a year of broad study.