What I Learned from HarvardX: R Basics Certificate Program
Hi folks.
I recently earned my first online certificate from edX. Cheers to me.
The program I chose to follow is called Data Science: R Basics. It is the first step of the Data Science professional certificate series offered by the HaravdX.
You may wonder what is HarvardX. Of course, you have heard about Harvard University. HarvardX is the term using for the online initiative of the Harvard University running via edX.
This program is instructed by Professor Rafael Irizarry. He is a Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health. Can you see his signature on the certificate?
Course Structure
The course mainly consists of 4 sections.
- Section 1: R Basics, Functions, and Data Types
- Section 2: Vectors, Sorting
- Section 3: Indexing, Data Wrangling, Plots
- Section 4: Programming Basics
Each section teaches you exactly what the name implies.
Section 1 gives you a basic understanding of the R language. The section will teach you how to import packages and use them in R scripts. Also, it will teach you about R data types and some of the inbuilt functions.
Section 2 teaches you how to work with vectors. You will also learn different sorting functions of R. When one function returns the sorted value list the other one returns the sorted index list.
Section 3 is a kind of extension of Section 2. It will teach you a few advanced methods to utilize indexing. Also, it teaches you how to filter datasets by applying conditions and more importantly using pipes to pass data from one instruction set to another. This section ends with some basics about data visualization.
Section 4 is all about functions. The section walks you through basic programming concepts like conditions, for-loops, and functions. If you have a basic understanding of programming, then this won’t be a challenge.
Assessments
Each section consists of few assessments to keep learners on track. These assessments are provided through an R testing window of DataCamp.
DataCamp is also one of the leading learning platforms in the Data Science domain. But talking about it is a topic for another day.
Apart from those subtopic assessments, there are final assessments for each section that summarized the knowledge of them. These final assessments are given by the edX platform itself.
To be honest, there are some challenging questions here are there. But they provide necessary instructions and tips to build the answer. If you are careful enough, you will get it right in the first attempt. But overconfidence can be your enemy.
Summary
I don’t suppose that you will need any prior knowledge of programming or data science in order to earn the certificate. The course is well structured. Every section consists of video lessons with clear pronunciation and notes which gives a better understanding of the course contents. Also, they allow you more than enough attempts to get the correct answer.
Data science is one of the sexiest jobs of the decade. It has an increasing demand which will never end in the near future. So why not give a try?
If you are not interested in online courses, then check the R for Data Science book authored by Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund. One of the best books that I have seen around.
Start your data science journey today and check where it takes you in your life.
Cheers.
