Introduction to Data Analysis

3 Units

This course provides a conceptual and hands-on introduction to reasoning with data. Introduction of basic statistical concepts; models vs. observations, common distributions, parameters vs. statistics, statistical inference, hypothesis testing, multiple hypotheses, confidence intervals. Use of computational approaches to address statistical problems; data representation, empirical assessment of statistical significance, assessment of the association between variables, dimensionality reduction, model building, evaluation, and validation. Data visualization and accessibility/interpretability of patterns in data and predictive models. Computational thinking and critical approaches in data science; common mistakes and issues in data analysis, causality vs. correlation, confounders, statistical artifacts, Simpson's paradox, base rate fallacy, stage migration, survivorship bias, censoring, misleading visualization. Offered as CSDS 313 and CSDS 413 . Prereq: Graduate student standing.