Abstract: 

Over the past seven years, the Data Incubator has taught thousands of students the basics of data science through the pedagogical and technological tools that we have developed. Our curriculum is based around a series of interactive notebooks, which serve both as an outline for lecture and reference material after graduation. We pride ourselves on teaching-by-doing, with lecture exercises, mini-projects, and a capstone portfolio to push students to get their hands dirty in code. All of our programs are supported by a JupyterHub deployment that ensures students can start programming the minute they join. In this presentation, we will highlight key components of our curriculum and discuss some of the challenges we seen along the way of teaching.

Bio: 

Robert Schroll is a data scientist in residence at the Data Incubator. Previously, he held postdocs in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Santiago, Chile, where he realized that his favorite parts of his job were teaching and analyzing data. He made the switch to data science and has been at the Data Incubator since. Robert holds a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago.