Preliminary schedule
Here is a preliminary schedule with key deadlines. You will usually have something due every week beyond these bigger assignments, either as a lab or as homework. Be sure to check the detail page of each week for specifics. Everything is shown in the week that it’s due, with the week beginning on Tuesday. Beginning around Spring Break, these routine homework assignments will become less frequent as you start concentrating on the longer-term work.
Try not to leave your explainer assignment until the last minute. It’ll make your final week of class even more difficult than usual, and it’s designed so that you can create your explainer any time you find something interesting.
When a deadline is shown for a class day, it means it’s due before class starts.
| Week num |
Date | Topics | Deadlines |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Jan. 14 | Intros & overview; Excel reboot; | Tu: Survey Fr: Integrity pledge |
| Jan. 16 | Ethics and data diaries; data types | ||
| 02 | Jan. 21 | Excel filter & sort | |
| Jan. 23 | Pivot tables | ||
| 03 | Jan. 28 | Understanding tidy data; Reading the data story | |
| Jan. 30 | Catch-up day and Excel review | Bring questions to class | |
| 04 | Feb. 4 & 6 | Excel exam Intro to programming |
Su. 2/9: 1st self-assessment |
| 05 | Feb. 11 | Intro to R and R markdown | |
| Feb. 13 | The tidyverse and its verbs | ||
| 06 | Feb. 18 & 20 | Replicating your Excel work in R: Filter and sort; group | |
| 07 | Feb. 25 & 27 | Joining in R; Guest speaker Pamela Ren Larson of the Arizona Republic | |
| 08 | Mar. 3-5 | Catch-up day. | No class on Mar. 5 |
| Mar. 10 | **SPRING BREAK** | ||
| 09 | Mar. 17-19 | Project workshop and R exam review | |
| 10 | Mar. 24-26 | R exam; Visualization as a reporting tool | Fri. Mar 27: Second self-assessment |
| 11 | Mar. 31-Apr. 2 | Scraping & API’s ; data from pdf’s | |
| 12 | Apr. 7-9 | Dealing with dirty data (OpenRefine); Intro to open source and investigative research | Su Apr 12: Optional Story memo first draft |
| 13 | Apr. 14-16 | Story memo workshop; Building your own dataset (lab) | Deadlines staggered for final story memo) |
| 14 | Apr. 21-23 | Data hunt workshop; Students’ choice #1 | Lab: data hunt (thurs) |
| 15 | Apr. 28-30 | Students’ choice #2, wrap-up & where to go from here | Thu: Final self-assessment |
The explainer assignment is in lieu of a final exam and is due when your final exam would end. The specific date and time will be on the Canvas assignment. However, I strongly suggest you knock this out earlier in the semester while your idea is fresh.