MS-DSPP Resources for Incoming Students

Resources for Learning R

Data Camp:

Wickham, Hadley, Garret Grolemund. (2017). “R for Data Science”. O’Reilly. Free online version available at: https://r4ds.had.co.nz/. This is a fantastic introduction to data science methodologies in R. 

Swirl: learn R, in R. [Free] swirl teaches you R programming and data science interactively, at your own pace, and right in the R console. This package is useful for getting a few for working with data structures in R. 

Data Carpentry: Introduction to R. [Free] A tutorial based walkthrough designed to get you started with object assignment, functional operations, and vector manipulations in R. 


Resources for Learning Python

Data Camp:

Sweigart, Al. (2020). “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python”. Pollock. Free version online: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/2e/chapter0// Provides practical programming exercises that go beyond the fairly bland tutorials on other free websites.

Python Exercises, Practice, and Solutions offered by w3resources: https://www.w3resource.com/python-exercises/

Corey Schafer’s YouTube Series on Object Oriented Programming in Python: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDa-Z5JzLYM&t=40s


Resources for Learning Commandline

Data Camp:

Code Academy:


Resources for Learning Math

3Blue1Brown: The most important part of linear algebra and calculus, especially in data science, is having an intuition of how it works. These YouTube videos made by Grant Sanderson have been central to making mathematical concepts “click” for students in the past. We suggest watching these videos, which are more conceptual, and then delving into the actual mathematical notation and derivations offered through Khan Academy. 

Khan Academy: If you’re weak on any of these mathematical concepts, it’s worth taking the time to go through the Khan Academy sequence. The videos are very detailed and incorporate practices to test comprehension. 

Sahota, Harpreet. “The Math You Absolutely Need for Data Science”. The Artists of Data Science.