Course Units

How-to Data Analysis

This course is intended as a blended learning module, although the provided introductions, explanations and examples might be useful for self-study only, too.

01 First Things First

Go through a brute force introduction into R, R Markdown, the RStudio IDE, version management with Git and GitHub’s classroom functionality to get ready for solving the upcoming assignment problems and submitting your solutions.

02 First Things Second

Look closer at data types and object types before focusing on the most important features of programming languages, namely operators and control structures.

03 Look at Your Data

Become familiar with reading and writing data, computing summary statistics and visual data exploration as the basics of data analysis.

04 Clean Your Data

Check the integrity of datasets and clean them up to ensure that the data basis for your analysis is consistent.

05 Describe Your Linear Data

Compute simple statistical linear regression models that relate a dependent to an independent variable.

06 Predict Your Linear Data

Compute simple linear models to predict dependent data and assess the performance with independent test samples.

07 Select Your Variables

Evaluate the importance of your independent variables and select an optimal subset for your prediction model.

08 Tune Your Models

Evaluate model tuning strategies and find optimal settings for your prediction model.

09 Predict Time Series

Look into some specific characteristics of time series data and predict future observations based on past dynamics.

10 Analyse Time Series

Analyse your time series data and decompose it into seasonal characteristics and long-term trends.

11 MOHA

Follow the link to start the Marburg Open Hackathon (MOHA)

12 Graphics

Visualize your data, get some hints for publication quality graphics, and learn about some packages specifically made for visualizations.