The Best Place to Learn All Things Data
Every year I peruse the listings of summer college training courses on research methods. Part of it is nostalgia—I loved school. But I’m also looking for courses that will keep me and our Versta employees at the forefront of new knowledge and research techniques. (I didn’t learn R in graduate school, so yes, I took an eight-week course!)
There are excellent choices from top schools, and many of our recommendations from previous years are being offered again. But this year I zeroed in on a set of courses at UNC Chapel Hill that seem like a dream. They’re short (just one or two days each), concentrated (all offered within the same week) and super-relevant to the most contemporary issues in research methods. Here’s how the university describes the offerings:
“Data Matters: Data Science Short Course Series” is a week-long series of classes for researchers, data analysts, and other individuals who wish to increase their skills in data studies and integrate data science methods into their research designs and skill sets. Scholars, analysts, and researchers from all disciplines and industries are welcome. Both one- and two-day courses will be offered; participants are welcome to register for one, two, or three classes.
Here are the courses being offered:
- Introduction to Data Science
- Data Visualization
- Introduction to R
- Data Curation: Managing Data throughout the Research Lifecycle
- Collecting, Classifying, and Analyzing Textual Data
- Internet of Everything
- Health Informatics: Big Data in Health and Medicine
- Open(ing) Data: Considerations in Data Sharing and Reuse
- Social Network Analysis
- System Dynamics and Agent-based Modeling
- Data Mining
This is a perfect list of the most important and relevant new issues in data science, and I wish I could take them all.
Courses like these are absolutely the best way to stay on top of methodological developments in our field. Industry conferences are great for networking and knowing the latest buzz. But if you really want to learn, then it’s back to school for you!
