Data Fundamentals

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

Range

The first thing you want to look at is the range of your data: from where to where does your data stretch? Does it start with small numbers? Large numbers? Does it run from negative to positive? All this is essential information that will help you to deal with your data.

Looking at the range will also help you to find errors in your data. Let’s say you are comparing body heights and that you’ve asked people to enter their size in centimetres. Say you find that your data’s values range from 127 to 622. There is clearly a mistake: 6m tall people are very rare, and the likelihood for you to have caught one is relatively small. You should go back to your data and check it.

What do you have to do to find your range? Simply go through your data and find the minimum and maximum value—the lowest and the highest, respectively. In a spreadsheet, you can do this with the formulas =MIN and =MAX.

Let’s say you have the following data (let’s take body sizes):

163.1 162.2 210.5 201.0 188.7 182.6 153.0 173.5 146.6 148.0

Question: What is the range of your dataset?

Hint: find the lowest number (minimum) and the highest number (maximum).
Answer: Our range is from: 146.6 to 210.5

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Data Fundamentals

Curriculum

Range

Question: What is the range of your dataset?

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