Data Into Insights (Spring 2021)

Course Information

COM 495/6/7: Turning Data into Insight and Stories

Location:

Class Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays; 10:30-11:45am

Instructor

Instructor: Jeremy Foote

Email: jdfoote@purdue.edu

Office Hours: Thursdays; 3:00-5:00pm and by appointment

Course Overview and Learning Objectives

We are increasingly surrounded by data, and those with the technical skills to analyze it are highly sought after. Even more valuable are those who can not only identify insights from data, but can communicate and persuade with those insights. This course will focus on both developing data skills and crafting persuasive data stories.

Students who complete this course will be able to:

1. Understand the role of narrative in interpreting and producing data analyses
2. Competently import, process, and prepare data from analysis in the R programming language
3. Crititcally analyze data visualizations and presentations, and recognize poor or misleading visualizations
4. Produce beautiful, well-designed data visualizations in R using ggplot2
5. Craft compelling data presentations

Required resources and texts

Laptop

This is a data analysis class and you will need access to a decent computer. You will need a machine with at least 2GB of memory. Windows, Mac OS, and Linux are all fine but an iPad or Android tablet won't work.