BIOL 185 - Data Science: Visualizing and Exploring Big Data

Planned Offering: Fall 2017 and alternate years.
Credits: 3

Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. No prior programming experience required. We live in the era of Big Data. Major discoveries in science and medicine are being made by exploring large datasets in novel ways using computational tools. The challenge in the biomedical sciences is the same as in Silicon Valley: knowing what computational tools are right for a project and where to get started when exploring large data sets. In this course, students learn to use R, a popular open-source programming language and data analysis environment, to interactively explore data. Case studies are drawn from across the sciences and medicine. Topics include data visualization, machine learning, image analysis, geospatial analysis, and statistical inference on large data sets. We also emphasize best practices in coding, data handling, and adherence to the principles of reproducible research. Fulfills the computer science requirement for biology and neuroscience majors. Whitworth.