What Is Programming? And How To Get Started
January 28, 2025
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This course is part of multiple programs.
Instructors: Roger D. Peng, PhD
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Understand analytic graphics and the base plotting system in R
Use advanced graphing systems such as the Lattice system
Make graphical displays of very high dimensional data
Apply cluster analysis techniques to locate patterns in data
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This course covers the essential exploratory techniques for summarizing data. These techniques are typically applied before formal modeling commences and can help inform the development of more complex statistical models. Exploratory techniques are also important for eliminating or sharpening potential hypotheses about the world that can be addressed by the data. We will cover in detail the plotting systems in R as well as some of the basic principles of constructing data graphics. We will also cover some of the common multivariate statistical techniques used to visualize high-dimensional data.
This week covers the basics of analytic graphics and the base plotting system in R. We've also included some background material to help you install R if you haven't done so already.
15 videos6 readings1 assignment5 programming assignments1 peer review
Welcome to Week 2 of Exploratory Data Analysis. This week covers some of the more advanced graphing systems available in R: the Lattice system and the ggplot2 system. While the base graphics system provides many important tools for visualizing data, it was part of the original R system and lacks many features that may be desirable in a plotting system, particularly when visualizing high dimensional data. The Lattice and ggplot2 systems also simplify the laying out of plots making it a much less tedious process.
7 videos1 reading1 assignment5 programming assignments
Welcome to Week 3 of Exploratory Data Analysis. This week covers some of the workhorse statistical methods for exploratory analysis. These methods include clustering and dimension reduction techniques that allow you to make graphical displays of very high dimensional data (many many variables). We also cover novel ways to specify colors in R so that you can use color as an important and useful dimension when making data graphics. All of this material is covered in chapters 9-12 of my book Exploratory Data Analysis with R.
12 videos1 reading4 programming assignments
This week, we'll look at two case studies in exploratory data analysis. The first involves the use of cluster analysis techniques, and the second is a more involved analysis of some air pollution data. How one goes about doing EDA is often personal, but I'm providing these videos to give you a sense of how you might proceed with a specific type of dataset.
2 videos2 readings1 programming assignment1 peer review
We asked all learners to give feedback on our instructors based on the quality of their teaching style.
Instructor ratings
We asked all learners to give feedback on our instructors based on the quality of their teaching style.
The mission of The Johns Hopkins University is to educate its students and cultivate their capacity for life-long learning, to foster independent and original research, and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.
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Reviewed on Sep 23, 2017
Very good course! It provide me the foundation in learning how to plot and interpret data. This will definitely strengthen my "R programming" to generate publication type figure for my genomics data!
Reviewed on Jan 17, 2016
Very nice course, plotting data to explore and understand various features and their relationship is the key in any research domain, and this course teaches the skill required to achieve this.
Reviewed on May 21, 2018
Week 3 - clustering concepts appear hard to comprehend initially. This week should first start with a practical example/use of clustering and then move on to technical
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