This course introduces students to the use of large data sets and prepares them for work in organizational and research settings. The students will learn the basics of acquiring and curating practical data, discovering patterns, and managing large datasets with databases. Students will work multiple modalities of data such as textual, networked, and numerical datasets.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Explain what “data” means, including its role, purpose, and impact in various industries and in research.
• Perform at least one practical application with three kinds of data: numeric data, text data, and network data.
• Describe techniques for data input, including sources of data, format conversion, data description (metadata), cleaning, and data quality measurement.
• Prepare data for use in visualizations such as boxplots, graphs, networks, and maps.
• Design effective database solutions.
• Use database software for importing and manipulating data to create reports.
• Use a query language to create actionable information.