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-2022

Getting Help

• Piazza 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

• A Nice Stream Graph Example

  Who speaks when in MACBETH?.

• Zoom Link for April 6 and 8 Classes

  Classes on April 6 and 8 will be on Zoom at

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

• 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.

  • A function fixCredCache for fixing permissions on the credentials cache socket on the RStudio notebook server.

  • 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.

• 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 12:30 - 1:30.

  Quizzes will be administered through ICON.

  Homework/projects will be submitted via GitLab.

  Please use Piazza, available on the navigation bar at the left of the class ICON page, to ask questions. Public questions to Piazza are best when possible, as then other students can benefit from seeing the answers. Your public questions can be anonymous if you prefer. You can also email me, but I will redirect you to Piazza 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.

• Homework and the Code of Academic Honesty

  Homework 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.

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.