Introduction

2025-09-03

General Information

• BST 260 Introduction to Data Science
• Instructors: Robert Gentleman, Anthony Christidis
• TFs: Angela Wang, Ava Harrington, Emma Crenshaw, Jing Li
• Mondays we have lectures, Wednesday we have labs.
• In lab we work on problem sets together.

Course Description

Lecture notes: https://datasciencelabs.github.io/2025/

Please read the syllabus!

Important details

• Complete readings before class.
• Midterms are in person. There are no makeups.
• Make sure you read messages sent via Canvas
• You can select your own final project, but need approval.
• You should start your final project by October 22.
• Help us pick office hours: https://forms.gle/GiQXqDTaeYVxaXd78

What’s coming

• UNIX/Linux shell.
• Reproducible document preparation
• Version control with git and GitHub
• R programming
• Data wrangling with dplyr and data.table
• Data visualization with ggplot2
• Probability theory, inference and modeling
• High-dimensional data techniques
• Machine learning

Let’s get started

• Install R.
• Install RStudio.
• Make sure you have access to a terminal.