Schedule

Timetable

The course has various learning activities, which are coordinated with each other and the assessment. The timetables are a bit different for Semester 1 and Semester 2:

Weekly activities

We recommend that each week you have a pattern of:

  • Doing the reading listed before the lectures. Most of the reading is from the FDS lecture notes:
FDS lecture notes
  • Attend the lectures, which include exercises, discussion, Q&A, demos or feedback on exercises. The lectures are delivered by Kobi Gal (KG), David Sterratt (DS) and Wenda Li (WL).
  • Test yourself with the comprehension questions in Learn afterwards.
  • Do the lab notebook - in S1 Weeks 1 to 7 there will be lab sessions in Appleton Tower with demonstrators; after then the labs are self-study
  • Attend the workshops - preparation the week before is ideal, but if you've not managed to prepare, you should get something from the workshops. All the workshops are designed to help you learn what we'll be assessing in the coursework and exam.  One of the workshops in particular is designed to familiarise you with the coursework released shortly after, including how we mark it. 

Coursework

There are 2 courseworks. You can see the schedule in the "Coursework Planner" in Learn or import the data into your calendar and use the coursework calendar file https://course.inf.ed.ac.uk/calendar/inf2-fds.ics to get all the coursework events into your Outlook or Google calendar.

Office hours

Mondays 4pm, after the lecture in the lower ground floor of 40 George Square.

Schedule

WeekLecture 1Lecture 2LabTask/workshopReading
Data: ethics, collection, representation, wrangling, exploration, visualisation and descriptive statistics
S1 W1    
16-20 Sep
Introduction and Logistics (KG)Data (KG)Introduction to Jupyter notebooks and Pandas Lecture Notes (LN) 1, 2
S1 W2    
23-27 Sep
Descriptive statistics (KG)    
 
Introduction to data ethics (KG)Pandas - Data wrangling ITask: Preparation for Week 3 Workshop on Ethics.LN 3,  4
An Introduction to Data Ethics, Parts 1 and 2
S1 W3    
30 Sep-4 Oct
Exploratory data analysis, data communication visualisation (DS/NR)Visualisation (NR)Data representation I - MatplotlibWorkshop: Data ethics discussionLN 5,  
The Big Book of Dashboards, Chapter 1
S1 W4    
7-11 Oct
No LectureData collection and statistical relationships (KG)Data representation II: DistributionsTask: Marking visualisations and interpretation in previous CW1LN 6
Linear Models
S1 W5    
14-18 Oct
Linear regression I (WL)Linear regression II (WL)Data wrangling IIWorkshop: Discussing visualisations and interpretation in previous CW1LN 7
S1 W6    
21-25 Oct
No lectureCoursework Q&ACW1 Lab  
S1 W7    
28 Oct-1 Nov
Multiple regression I (WL)Multiple regression II (WL)Linear models
and CW1
 LN 8, 9
S1 W8    
4-8 Nov
Principal Components Analysis I (WL)Principal Components Analysis II (WL)PCATask: Preparation for Week 9 workshopLN 10
Introduction to Machine Learning
S1 W9    
11-15 Nov
No LectureIntro to supervised learning: Nearest neighbours (KG)k-Nearest NeighboursWorkshop: Interpretation of data science study using multiple regressionLN 11
S1 W10    
18-22 Nov
k-Nearest Neighbours and Evaluation (KG)

Intro to unsupervised learning: K-means (KG)

Followed by feedback on CW1 (DS)

K-means LN 12, 13
S1 W11    
25-29 Nov
No lectureNo lecture   
Statistical inference
S2 W1    
13-17 Jan
Intro to inferential statistics (DS)Randomness, sampling and simulation (DS)Randomness, sampling and simulations LN 14
S2 W2    
20-24 Jan
Estimation (DS)Confidence intervals (DS)Estimation of confidence intervals with the bootstrapTask: Problem sheet for S2 Week 2 WorkshopLN 15, 16
S2 W3    
27-31 Feb
Hypothesis testing and p-values (DS)

 
A/B testing (DS)
 
No lab

Workshop: Statistical problems 1

Task: Critical evaluation preparation

 

LN 17, 18,  
XKCD comic strip on multiple testing,  
A hypothesis is a liability
The maximum likelihood principle and regression
S2 W4    
3-7 Feb
Inference of regression coefficients and logistic regression (DS)Logistic regression (DS)Logistic regressionWorkshop: Critical evaluationLN 19, 20
S2 W5    
10-14 Feb
Linear regression and inference (DS)Generalised linear models (DS)Web-scrapingTask: Problem sheet for S2 Week 6 WorkshopLN 21
S2, FLW    
17-21 Feb
     
S2 W6    
24-28 Feb
Project Q&A and Ethical and legal issues in supervised learning (DS)No lecture Workshop: Statistical problems 2LN 22, Equality law can disadvantage women in algorithmic credit decisions
Project and project skills
S2 W7    
3-7 Mar
Software engineering for data science (DS)No lecture  Good enough practices in scientific computing,  
Reproducible Analysis Through Automated Jupyter Notebook Pipelines,  
The scientific paper is obsolete
S2 W8    
10-14 Mar
Project writing workshop in lecture slot (DS)No lecture Workshop: Project presentations 
S2 W9    
17-21 Mar
Guest lecture:
"Data Science in Action: Exploring Edinburgh’s Student Housing Crisis"​
Toby Wyckoff Smith (FDS alumnus) of​
Slurp: Students for Action on Homelessness
No lecture Workshop: Project presentations 
S2 W10    
24-28 Mar
No lectureNo lecture Workshop: Project presentations 
S2 W11    
31 Mar-4 Apr
     
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