These policies are subject to change until the beginning of the semester and throughout the remainder of the course, at the judgement of the course staff.
All times listed on the course webpage are in Eastern Standard Time (EST).
You are not alone in this course; the course staff are here to support you as you learn the material. It’s expected that some aspects of the course will take time to master, a nd the best way to master challenging material is to ask questions. We will use Piazza for online questions and discussions.
The course staff will be holding regular office hours. We have listed their times on our Office Hours page.
The Q-Center is a great resource as well. You can book an appoi ntment online.
More academic support, e.g. peer mentors, academic coaches, and others, can be found at https://www.brynmawr.edu/academicsupport/academic-and-student-support-services. Students are encouraged to reach out to the Directo r of Academic Support to explore effective learning, studying, test-taking, note-taking and time and stress management strat egies that are essential to success in this course and college life. Students can schedule a meeting with the Director of Ac ademic Support by visiting the Office of Academic Support website.
DS 100 has no prerequisites. The curriculum and format is designed specifically for students who have not previously taken statistics or computer science courses. Students with some prior experience in either statistics or computing are welcome to enroll and will find much of interest due to the innovative nature of the course. Students who have taken several statistics or computer science courses should instead take a more advanced course.
The main text is a free online textbook called Computational and Inferential Thinking: The Foundations of Data Science. This textbook was created by instructors of data8, a popular course at Berkeley. Our course is adopted from data8.
The computing platform for the course is hosted at . You will login using your BMC/HC credentials. Materials for all homeworks, projects, and labs will be distributed on the course schedule page.
Homework assignments are a required part of the course. Homeworks will be released at the latest Thursday evenings and will be due the following Thursday. Each student must submit each homework independently, but you are encouraged to discuss problems with other students and course staff.
Data science is about analyzing real-world data sets, and so a series of projects involving real data are a required part of the course. On each project, you may work with a single partner. Both partners will receive the same score.
To account for issues that arise, each student has 5 late days for the homeworks and projects. However, you can only use at most 2 late days per assignment.
There are weekly labs. We encourage you to submit the lab after attending your lab section but the lab will be due the following Friday night. Late days can not be used for labs.
To account for issues that arise, we will drop your lowest homework and and lowest lab.
At Bryn Mawr, we assume students are trustworthy and work with honesty and integrity. Look here for information about Bryn Mawr’s Honor Code.
As you progress in this course, you will see that programming is a creative process, similar to writing. The same problem can be solved in multiple ways. It’s essential that you develop your own skills for developing algorithms and implementing them through programs.
*Discussing ideas and approaches to problems with others on a general level is fine (in fact, we encourage you to discuss general strategies with each other), but you should never read anyone else’s code or let anyone else read your code.
All code you submit should be your own with the following permissible exceptions: code distributed in class, and code found in the course text book. In these cases, you should always include detailed comments that indicates on which parts of the assignment you received help, and what your sources were.
Please don’t hesitate to ask the awesome teaching assistants (TAs) for help. They provide TA hours most week nights and are excellent mentors!
Please discuss the readings and associated topics with each other. Work together to understand the material. Reading groups to discuss the material are highly recommended — we will explore many ideas and it helps to have multiple people working together to understand them.
It is fine to discuss the topics covered in the homeworks, to discuss approaches to problems, and to sketch out general solutions. However, you MUST write up the homework answers, solutions, and programs individually without sharing specific details, mathematical results, program code, etc.
Under NO circumstances should you share computer code with another student. Similarly, you are not permitted to use code found on the internet for any of your assignments.
Exams, of course, must be your own individual work.
All classes will be recorded and close-captioned. Links to lectures will be posted on the course webpage.
Any student who has a disability-related need to record this class first must speak with the Director of Access Services, Deb Alder, as part of university policy. Class members need to be aware that this class may be recorded.
To receive an accommodation for a course activity (such as more time on exams), you must have an Accommodation Letter from the Office of Student Disability Services and you need to contact us to work out the details of your accommodation at least two weeks prior to the activity. Forms can be emailed to me, the instructor.
You are also welcome to contact us privately to discuss your academic needs. However, all disability-related accommodations must be arranged, in advance, through Student Disability Services.
Students needing academic accommodations for a disability must first register with Access Services. Students can call 610-526-7516 to make an appointment with the Director of Access Services, Deb Alder, or email her at dalder@brynmawr.edu to begin this confidential process. Once registered, students should schedule an appointment with the professor as early in the semester as possible to share the verification form and make appropriate arrangements. Please note that accommodations are not retroactive and require advance notice to implement. More information can be obtained at the Access Services website: http://www.brynmawr.edu/access-services/.
Lectures and labs will have a mask-friendly policy. All are welcome to wear a mask if they so wish, but no one is mandated to wear a mask.
If you are symptomatic (coughing, sore throat, or running nose), please stay at home. Lectures will be recorded so they can be watched later. Missed lab activities will be able to be made up on your own.