Introduction to Data Science

Harvard Extension School

CSCI E-109A

Section 1

CRN 16877

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This course focuses on the analysis of messy, real-life data to perform predictions using statistical and machine learning methods. Material covered integrates the five key facets of an investigation using data: data collection—data wrangling, cleaning, and sampling to get a suitable data set; data management—accessing data quickly and reliably; exploratory data analysis—generating hypotheses and building intuition; prediction or statistical learning; and communication—summarizing results through visualization, stories, and interpretable summaries. Students who have previously completed CSCI E-107 or CSCI E-109 (both offered previously) may not count CSCI E-109a or CSCI E-109b toward a degree or certificate.

Credits: 4

Term

Fall Term 2025

Part of Term

Full Term

Format

Online

Credit Status

Graduate

Section Status

Open

Instructor Info

Pavlos Protopapas, PhD

Scientific Program Director and Lecturer, Institute for Applied Computational Science, Harvard University

Kevin A. Rader, PhD

Senior Preceptor in Statistics, Harvard University

Christopher William Gumb, ALB

Preceptor in Computational and Data Science, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University

Meeting Info

9/2 to 12/20

Participation Option: Online Asynchronous

Deadlines

Last day to register:

Prerequisites

Programming knowledge at the level of CSCI E-50 or above, statistics knowledge at the level of STAT E-100 or above, and calculus (MATH E-15 or the equivalent) required. It is recommended that students have received a grade of B+ or better in these courses before enrolling in CSCI E-109a. Introductory probability is recommended.

Notes

The recorded lectures are from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences companion course Computer Science 1090a. Registered students can ordinarily live stream the lectures Mondays and Wednesdays, 10:30-11:45 am starting September 3 or they can watch them on demand. The recorded sessions are typically available within a few hours of the end of class and no later than the following business day. Class sessions for this course may include students enrolled in the FAS companion course. Accordingly, when you participate in live class sessions, you will do so alongside both Division of Continuing Education (DCE) and FAS students. If you participate in a way that causes you to appear in recordings of the class, those recordings may be shown to DCE students enrolled in this course or FAS students enrolled in the companion course, according to the policies of the two schools on accessing recordings of class sessions.

Tuition

All Sections of this Course

CRN	Section #	Participation Option(s)	Instructor	Section Status	Meets	Term Dates
16877	1	Online Asynchronous	Team Taught	Open		Sep 2 to Dec 20