Curriculum

9 Sections
50 Lessons
Lifetime

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What is Data?
This course gives a short introduction in the world of data. If you are starting your journey into this wonderful land, this course is for you. The course covers basic concepts, different types of data and gives an introduction to machine readable data.
6
Finding Data
Don't know where to start looking for data? This section gives an introduction to data portals and different data sources. Finally we will walk you through how to use one sample data portal.
5
Sort and Filter: The basics of spreadsheets
So you found and downloaded your dataset? What now? Sort and Filter introduces a powerful tool to manage data: Spreadsheets. Based on Google Spreadsheets, this Course introduces the basic functions as well how to sort and filter data to find what you might be interested in…
8
Taming the Fierce Beast – The Math you need to start
Worried about all those numbers? This module will help you to refresh the basic math (don't be afraid it's mainly counting and adding).
10
'But what does it mean?': Analyzing data (spreadsheets continued)
Wonder how to make sense of the data? Basic Analysis will help you to understand what your data might mean. It also introduces spreadsheet formulas and helps you calculate more values out of what you already have.
4
From Data to Diagrams: An introduction to plots and charts
A picture says more than a thousand words – yeah but how do we turn a thousand words into a picture? This section will help you to understand basic data visualization and create them using Google spreadsheets. Visualizing data will help you to better understand the data you are handling.
7
Look Out!: Common Misconceptions and how to avoid them
Not everything is easily understood in dataland. In this course we give a short overview over common pitfalls when talking about data and how to avoid them. It can help you avoid the mistakes made as well as read other peoples claims more carefully. If you want to learn what to watch out for: join in!
9
Tell me a story: Working out what’s interesting in your data
Data alone is meaningless and often boring. To understand it better you will need context. In this section we will talk about how to publish the data we worked on throughout the basic track. We will talk about how to identify key points of your data to help you use data to make your voice heard.
6
Data provenance
To make a credible and sustainable data project, you need to document your steps right from the beginning. This course contains tips and tricks and tools for doing so.
3

Introduction

The last tutorials was all text and grey, so let’s add some glitter to the world of data: Data Visualization. Data visualization is not just about making what you found look good – often it is a way of gaining insight into the data. We just understand graphical information on a better level than we understand numbers and tables. Look at the example below: How long does it take to see the trend in the table, how long in the chart?

Data visualization is a great skill and if done right has great value. If done incorrectly, you will lead people astray and plant wrong ideas in their heads. Remember: With great power comes great responsibility.

In this tutorial we have two missions:

To understand which type of chart is most appropriate to present your data
To learn the basic workflow for inserting basic charts into a spreadsheet with Google Docs.

For this tutorial you will need to have the share settings on your spreadsheet set to “public on the web” – otherwise some of the things we cover won’t work. Do so by changing the settings with the blue share button on the top right.

In case you haven’t completed the last module the spreadsheet we are working with is here.

Quiz

Data Fundamentals

Curriculum

Introduction

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