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Case study: sensationalised data

Following on from the previous step, let’s look at a real example of where data has been sensationalised. A few years ago, new evidence (Gunter et al. 2017) suggested that …

Bias and error in data collection

In a statistical sense, bias at the collection stage means that the data you have gathered is not representative of the group or activity you want to say something about. …

BODMAS

In the previous step, we used mathematical expressions to transform raw data values. When looking at more complex mathematical expressions, we need to be crystal clear about exactly how the …

Practise modifying code

The Python code we developed for comparing the values of two dice in the previous step can be modified to study a different kind of dice, called Grime Dice (invented …

Sense checking sensational statistics

Thinking about the ‘scientist’ part of the data scientist’s skill set, we might say that a good scientist is: objective, independent and curious. Scientists also, however, limit their confidence about …

Learning a new language

What exactly is programming and how do we get started? Programming is a type of written language that allows us to send instructions to devices and computers to complete specific …

Avoiding ambiguity

Computers are not very clever, and they don’t do very clever things. They appear to be doing clever things, however, just by doing incredibly simple things very, very fast. How …

A day in the life

What does it meant to be a data scientist? Watch the video to find out what being a data scientist involves – skills, tasks, knowledge and interests – and how …

Coming up with questions

We have seen the importance of asking questions in data science. Whether we have a particular question in mind or only a vague idea, questions need to be carefully formulated …

Welcome back

Welcome to the second week in Data Science. Last week, we looked at the sorts of skills a data scientist uses, considered the importance of asking questions in data science, …

How do we design good experiments?

While we may have access to lots of existing data, it does not necessarily mean that it will answer the questions we want to ask. Sometimes we will need to …

Where is your data?

We have seen that data scientists ask questions with the hope of being able to answer them using data and apply software (or implement algorithms) to process data. The connection …

Putting it all together

The RMS Titanic was a passenger ship which famously sank in the North Atlantic in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. Over the next few steps, you’ll have an opportunity to …