Other Resources
You will need a suitable computer. The University's
Computer Recommendations are appropriate for this course for Windows and OS X. If you use the Linux
operating system this course, the recommendations for Windows computers will also be suitable for Linux.
Please see the Online Learning page for more information
regarding expected student student access to the internet, and corresponding software.
Please see the Mercer's Distance Learning page for more information
regarding expected student student access to the internet, and corresponding software.
Course Description
Special Topics. This is a second graduate course in data science.
This Online Learning course begins on January 9, 2017 at 12:00 am Eastern time. All assignments
are due by the end (11:59:59 pm) of the specified calendar day in the Eastern time zone. This course ends at
11:59:59 pm on May 1, 2017, in the Eastern time zone.
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Prerequisite(s)
Introduction to Data Science I, which was offered as SSE 691, a special topics
course, in Fall semester, 2016.
This prerequisite provides one graduate-level 3 semester hour
introductory course using Python.
Please see the Online Learning page for more information
regarding expected student abilities and aptitudes.
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Grading
Item
|
Percent of Term Grade
|
Direct Activity Report 1 |
3
|
Direct Activity Report 2 |
3
|
Direct Activity Report 3 |
4
|
Project 1 |
10
|
Project 2 |
40
|
Project 3 |
40
|
Credit will be given only for original work.
The Mercer University Student Handbook, including its provisions for
academic honesty including plagiarism, applies to all Mercer
students.
Project reports are to be submitted complete, not as
incremental partial submissions.
All course work time is categorized as either Direct or
Non-Direct (but not both). More information about the Direct and
Non-Direct categories is contained in the Direct and Non-Direct and Report Logs. Please read these pages very
carefully.
Instruction Time
Federal and regional accreditation requirements stipulate that
a 3-credit hour course must include 150 minutes of direct instruction
time per week. For this course, that direct instruction time
includes"
- Collaborative discussions with other students regarding the
content of readings assigned for the course.
- Collaborative discussions with other students regarding the
content that goes beyond readings assigned for the course, but is
not part of work on the projects assigned on the syllabus.
- Collaborative development of generic technology that may be
useful for your project(s), but is not, in its generic form, part of
your project.
In addition to the 150 minutes of direct instruction time each
week, students are expected to spend a minimum of 300 additional
minutes per week completing reading and writing assignments:
- Doing the assigned reading.
- Working on the projects assigned on the syllabus.
More information about the Direct and Non-Direct categories is
contained in the Direct and
Non-Direct and Report Logs web
pages. Please
read these pages very carefully.
All deliverables (Activity Reports and Project Reports)
are due on their assigned dates .
- Deliverables submitted no more than one day late may be graded,
but with a 10% penalty. That is, ten points will be deducted from
the score that would have been awarded if the deliverable was received
on time.
- Deliverables submitted more than one day (24 hours) late will
receive a grade of zero.
- The Non-Direct Activity reports are part of the project reports.
The Non-Direct Activity reports do not receive a separate
grade, but are used to help in evaluating your project reports.
Use the Report Logs to help you to manage your time and keep on
schedule. You should schedule your work evenly throughout
the term.
More information about project grading is contained
in the General Project Rubric .
If you have a question about any of this, please ask.
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Assignments
- Purpose of projects:
- Use the projects to develop your capabilities, and
- Use the projects to demonstrate your capabilities.
- Deliverables for all projects:
All course work time is categorized as either Direct or
Non-Direct (but not both). Read Direct
and Non-Direct and Report Logs
before continuing. Please read these pages very carefully.
All Direct Activity Reports include a Direct
Activity Log, and may include additional supporting material at
your discretion.
All Project Reports include a Non-Direct
Activity Log, in addition to your work on the project.
- Projects shall be delivered via the course FTP
site.
- Project reports should each be a single, standalone .pdf
document, with the Bookmark feature used to support easy document
navigation. Note that both MS Word and LibreOffice (which is free
open-source software) support bookmarks, and will carry the
bookmarks over into the pdf document when they convert your .docx,
.odf, or whatever file type to PDF.
- Project reports should focus on the development and/or
maintenance that you actually do. Reports should not focus on
summarizing or explaining the text or other materials.
- Inclusion of screenshots demonstrating your work, and code
you actually wrote for the project, are appropriate. Long code
listings can be placed in appendices if doing so does not
interfere with you presenting your work on that code in the body
of the text.
- Your report should be organized in such a way as to make
the topics that you want credit for covering easy to find, and
demonstrate your capabilities clearly and convincingly. Everything
you want considered for credit, including code and tests
(including test results), should be included in the report.
- Each project can be a single, integrated project that
tries to actually do something, or a collection of exercises that
demonstrate your capabilities but don't accomplish anything else,
or any combination of these two alternatives that you find
convenient, unless otherwise specified in the assignment.
- You may include other material outside of the report (on
the FTP site), if you wish, but this material may or _may not_ be
considered in evaluating your work.
- For each capability that you demonstrate within a report
or major section of that report, you may present only the final
result of your work; you need not demonstrate every step in the
development of that result.
- Some suggestions for doing a project are
contained in the One Way to Do a Project
page.
For three person teams each team member must provide the
professor, by the end of the course, with their independent estimate
of how much of the team's work was done by each team member.
- Project 1(Solo or Team)
- Develop a plan for your study for the rest of this course.
- This plan may be changed, with approval, as the course
progresses, and you learn more.
- Your plan of study can address topics from the textbook by
Grus, but in greater depth than that textbook.
- Rather than focusing on the "from scratch" approach,
you should make use of appropriate Python libraries.
- You may, if you wish, focus on using the R language for
statistical programming.
- Regardless of the other details of your plan, your final
result and report should be a data science project. For example,
if you focus in part or in whole on statistics, your deliverables
should focus on the use of statistics for data science, rather
that on statistics per se.
- Project 2 (Solo or Team)
- Project 3 (Solo or Team)
- Please raise any issues or questions via the course
listserv.
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Additional Information
- Asynchronous Learning Nets (ALNs)
-
- Self Study: You study the texts and any other course study
material on your own(team).
- Collaborative Projects: After your self-study, you
collaborate (via the Internet [email]) with your partner(s) to
produce a team product. Your collaborative work is substantial,
asynchronous, and rapid.
- This course is an online learning course. Please read this
Online Learning web page
regarding online learning in this course and this program.
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What Do I Do?
- Subscribe to the course email listserv. Your professor can tell you how to do
this.
- Study the assigned material.
- Use the Report Logs to help you to manage your time and keep on
schedule. You should schedule your work evenly throughout the term.
- Write and read email messages about ideas, problems and
solutions to do with the assigned study material.
- Do the assigned work, deliver the assigned deliverables.
- Write and read email messages (to/from the listserv) about
ideas, problems, projects, and solutions to do with the assigned
homework.
- Review the deliverables produced by other people.
Changes to this Syllabus:
There will be changes to this syllabus, so check back
frequently, and don't forget to hit "Reload" or "Refresh".
Schedule of Assignments and Events (tentative)
Start Date
|
End Date
|
Activity/Event
|
January 9, 2017 |
May 1, 2017 |
Course in Progress |
January 9, 2017 |
January 23, 2017 |
Work on Project 1 |
|
January 23, 2017 |
Project 1 due. |
|
February 6, 2017 |
Direct Activity Report 1 due.
|
|
March 13, 2017 |
Project 2 due. |
|
March 20, 2017 |
Direct Activity Report 2 due. |
|
May 1, 2017 |
Direct Activity Report 3 due.
Project 3 due.
Course ends. Firm date. |
Notes: The course begins at midnight (12:00 am) on the first day of class (see schedule above), and ends
at 11:59:59 pm on the last day of class. Assignments are due at any time during the day specified on the schedule,
that is, before 11:59:59 pm on that day. All times are Macon, Georgia (Eastern time zone) times.
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