The eScience Institute offers the annual Winter School to students and lecturers interested in developing basic skills and knowledge of the tools used in data science. Gaining literacy in topics such as Python, R, Jupyter, and reproducible environments can be beneficial beyond STEM, including areas like global or public health, public policy, social sciences, social work, international relations, and business management.
There are no prerequisites to take this course and there is no credit offered. UW faculty, staff, undergraduate students, and graduate students are welcome to apply.
The deadline to apply is January 24th, 2025
Winter School 2025 classes will be held IN-PERSON
Sessions will be on Thursdays from 9:00 to 12:30 p.m. The dates will be February: 6,13, 27 / March: 6.
Session 1: February 6th, 9 am
Python and R: This class will give an overview of Python and R simple data structures in a comparative way (vectors, lists, dictionaries, tuples, sets, data frames). This first session will focus on differences between these languages, and will help students with related procedures such as installation and environments, as well as user interfaces.
Session 2: February 13th, 9 am
Python for PreProcessing: This class will give an overview of Python capabilities for different data management processes (collection, cleaning, formatting, merging, aggregating,and exporting).
Session 3: February 27th, 9 am
R for Data Visualization: This class will introduce students to R programming language. It will focus on its capabilities for data visualization using ggplot.
Session 4: March 6th,9 am
Publishing Reproducible Research : This last class will organize the work done in the previous session. It will teach students how to combine R and tools like Markdown (for document preparation), Github (for organizing data repositories), Zotero (to manage references), and Flexdasboards.
About the Instructor
Professor Jose Manuel Magallanes, PhD is a Senior Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute since 2015, he is currently a Visiting Professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington, and has been a Visiting Professor at the Evans School of Government. Additionally, he is a Professor of Political Science and Government at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru (PUCP), Director of the Institute for Social Analytics and Strategic Intelligence PULSO-PUCP, and chairs the Interdisciplinary Group for Public Policy Foresight. He is also a lecturer in the Master Program in Data Analytics and Computational Social Science at UMass Amherst. He has also been a visiting scholar at Duke, Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil), and Universidad de los Andes (Colombia).
Professor Magallanes holds a Phd in Computational Social Science from George Mason University. He is also a PhD in Psychology from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM), a M.A. in Political Science from PPUCP, and a BSc in Computer Science from UNMSM.
The Winter School is offered free of charge thanks to the support of the eScience Institute and its funding partners. Professor Magallanes acknowledges the material has been developed thanks to his visiting at the UW’s eScience Institute, the Department of Sociology at UW, the Evans School at UW, and to the work he develops at PULSO PUCP .