Guides & Tutorials: Computing: Learn Data Skills

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Why We Need Data Skills

As a university student or researcher, you may come across different situations of dealing with data, e.g. first-hand data collected from your experiments, or processed data obtained from a data provider. Excel spreadsheets could be your first tool for processing data, but when it comes to scaling and working with larger datasets, you may need some advanced data skills. Mastering such skills not only helps you handle more complicated datasets and automate tasks, it may also bring you a different perspective when facing your challenge.

Below are some Library and online resources to help you get started. Learn the skills today, which may open up new opportunities for you tomorrow.

Learning Resources

DataCamp
an interactive learning platform for data science; provides data training courses, projects, and assessments to learn programming, data cleaning/manipulation/visualization, machine learning, etc. with different languages and technologies such as R, Python, SQL, Spreadsheets/Excel, and Tableau. Most courses are beginner-friendly!

To get started, make sure to register through Library's page!

Here is an example of a Python course - learn through short tutorials and lots of hands-on!

O'Reilly
provides a rich collection of tech books and video tutorials on programming, computer science, and more. The platform also offers proven learning paths for IT professionals and case studies of tech companies.
Here is an example of a learning path designed for data science or IT professionals who want to get involved in database design. The platform will guide you through a series of videos and book chapters to help achieve your learning goal.

W3Schools
offers free tutorials and a rich collection of reference materials to learn programming: HTML & CSS, JavaScript, SQL, Python, PHP, Bootstrap, etc.
Kaggle
provides short tutorials and hands-on coding exercises. Courses cover Python, SQL, Data Visualization, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Geospatial Analysis, and more.
freeCodeCamp
offers free tutorials and projects to learn coding for web design, front and back end development, data analysis, data visualization, machine learning, etc.
GitHub Learning Lab
GitHub is the largest platform for developers and companies to host and maintain open-source projects. Their learning labs also provide free and beginner-friendly courses and real-world projects for practice.
Codecademy
an innovative platform to learn programming: HTML & CSS, JavaScript, Java, SQL, PHP, R, Python, Swift, etc. Some basic courses are free.
Coursera
offers many free courses developed by world-class universities and companies. The courses cover a wide range of topics including data science, programming, information security, statistics, and more.
edX - Computer Science Courses
offers many free courses developed by world-class universities and companies.

Stack Overflow
a community to help you to find coding solutions. It is used by nearly everyone who codes to learn, share their knowledge, collaborate, and build their careers.
Medium.com
an open platform where readers find dynamic thinking, and where expert and undiscovered voices can share their writing on any topic. Some interesting topics include: Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain.

IT Support for Research
PolyU ITS also provides online training resources and courses on programming and data science tools (e.g. Python, R).

Library Guide on Research Data Management
The Library Guide on Research Data Management introduces relevant topics, including data management principles, data management planning, data processing, data sharing and reuse.