In a world increasingly driven by data, the need for analysis and visualisation is more important than ever. In this course we will look at data through the eyes of a numerical detective. We will work on the lost art of exploratory data analysis, reviewing appropriate methods for data summaries with the aim to summarise, understand, extract hidden patterns and identify relationships. We will then work on graphical data analysis, using simple graphs to understand the data, but also advanced complex methods to scrutinise data and interactive plots to communicate data information to a wider audience.
For data analysis and visualisations we will use R-studio, and a combination of R-shiny applications and google visualisations for interactive plotting.
Aims
The aim of the course will be to create data analysts that can identify patterns and display information from data of several sources. The course will encourage statistical thinking by a series of examples of good and not-so-good visualisations and will guide students to develop their creativity within a scientific framework.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the course students will be able to:
- Summarise and understand information on categorical and continuous variables
- Explore relationships between different variables
- Display graphical information and complex relationships in datasets using R
- Use advanced statistical packages like ggplot2 and produce statistical reports with Rmarkdown
- Create interactive graphs with R shiny and googleVis
Syllabus
- Data Visualization for Human Perception
- What makes a good graph – What makes a bad graph
- Examining variables and basic R charts
- Exploring relationships, looking for structure
- Advanced plots with ggplot2
- Creating statistical reports with Rmarkdown
- Interactive graphs
- Testing data quality through graphs
- Telling a story
- Module Supervisor: Xu Chen
- Module Supervisor: Vasileios Giagos