University of Iowa

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

• STAT:4580
• Syllabus
• Outline
• Homework
• Notes
• Resources
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Data Visualization and Data Technologies

Objectives

• Learn how to acquire, prepare, explore, and visualize data
• in ways that are reproducible, reusable, and shareable

Tools

• R and the RStudio IDE
• R Markdown
• Git and GitLab, using the UI GitLab service
• RStudio Notebook for the class
• FastX web client or desktop client for accessing the CLAS Linux computers.

Selected topics

• Basic visualizations for different data types.
• Defining visualizations using the Grammar of Graphics and ggplot2
• Understanding human perception and its impact on visualization.
• Exploring and cleaning data.
• Getting data off the web.
• Generating reports using knitr and R Markdown.
• Version control with Git.
• Automating an analytical pipeline, e.g. via Make

GitLab

The course group on the UIowa GitLab server: https://research-git.uiowa.edu/STAT4580-Spring-2024

Getting Help

• A Q&A discussion is available through ICON.
• Your TA and I will try to answer short email questions.
• We are also available in office hours.

Announcements and Hints

• Data Files for your Project

  For your project you will probably need to access one or more data files. You can make these available in several different ways. The basic options are:

  • Include the data file in your Project folder in your repository, commit it, and push to the UI GitLab service.

  • Have the file available on a web site and have your code download it or read it from a URL.

  If you want to use the web option:

  • You can set up a personal web page, and place the files there. One option is to use the personal web pages provided on the CLAS Linux systems.

  • You can email your data files to me; I will make them available on the class web site and send you a URL for accessing them.

  You can also include code for downloading the data from public web sites.

• Resolving Notebook Server Issues

  Occasionally you may get an error message when trying to connect to your notebook server. Two things to try to resolve this:

  • Clear your browser cache and cookies..
  • Restart your server.

• Utilities Package STAT4580

  I made a small utilities package STAT4580 that provides:

  • A function checkHW for checking that your files are named properly and that your Rmarkdown file renders without error with a fresh checkout.

  • An Rmarkdown template for homework.

  More may be added later. The package is installed on the RStudio notebook server and on FastX. You can install it on your own machine with

  remotes::install_gitlab("luke-tierney/STAT4580")

  You may need to install the remotes package from CRAN first.

• Virtual Instruction

  If the class has to move on line lectures will be on Zoom at

  https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/93982174212?pwd=ZXZTNDlrSmV4cUpOU3ZDV2JGeG9aQT09

• Some Course Details

  Office hours will be held via Zoom MWF 10:30-11:20 or by appointment.

  Grader office hours will be held via Zoom MTWTh 11:30 - 12:20.

  Quizzes will be administered through ICON.

  Homework/projects will be submitted via GitLab.

  Please use the Q&A discussion, available in Discussions on the navigation bar at the left, to ask questions. Public questions are best when possible as then other students can benefit from seeing the answers. The TA and I will monitor the board and try to respond to any question within 24 hours. You can also email the TA or me, but we may redirect you to the Q&A discussion unless confidentiality is needed.

  If you want help with a particular coding issue please commit and push what you have to GitLab, open an Issue in GitLab, and assign the issue to me and I will respond.

  Please log into https://research-git.uiowa.edu/ with your HawkID so I can set up your class GitLab repository.

  Please let me know if you have any issues accessing the course materials.

• Code of Academic Honesty

  Homework submissions and project submissions are governed by the Code of Academic Honesty.

  • Work you submit must be your own work, not the work of others.
  • If you use ideas or results found elsewhere you must cite them properly. This includes use of an AI-content generator (such as ChatGPT) for any of your work.

Acknowledgments

This course website is derived from the site for STAT545 at the University of British Columbia

This work is licensed under the CC BY-NC 3.0 Creative Commons License.