This course focuses on the concepts and tools behind reporting modern data analyses in a reproducible manner. Reproducible research is the idea that data analyses, and more generally, scientific claims, are published with their data and software code so that others may verify the findings and build upon them. The need for reproducibility is increasing dramatically as data analyses become more complex, involving larger datasets and more sophisticated computations. Reproducibility allows for people to focus on the actual content of a data analysis, rather than on superficial details reported in a written summary. In addition, reproducibility makes an analysis more useful to others because the data and code that actually conducted the analysis are available. This course will focus on literate statistical analysis tools which allow one to publish data analyses in a single document that allows others to easily execute the same analysis to obtain the same results.
Johns Hopkins UniversityAbout this Course
Learner Career Outcomes
31%
35%
13%
What you will learn
Organize data analysis to help make it more reproducible
Write up a reproducible data analysis using knitr
Determine the reproducibility of analysis project
Publish reproducible web documents using Markdown
Skills you will gain
Learner Career Outcomes
31%
35%
13%
Offered by
Johns Hopkins University
The mission of The Johns Hopkins University is to educate its students and cultivate their capacity for life-long learning, to foster independent and original research, and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Week 1: Concepts, Ideas, & Structure
This week will cover the basic ideas of reproducible research since they may be unfamiliar to some of you. We also cover structuring and organizing a data analysis to help make it more reproducible. I recommend that you watch the videos in the order that they are listed on the web page, but watching the videos out of order isn't going to ruin the story.
Week 2: Markdown & knitr
This week we cover some of the core tools for developing reproducible documents. We cover the literate programming tool knitr and show how to integrate it with Markdown to publish reproducible web documents. We also introduce the first peer assessment which will require you to write up a reproducible data analysis using knitr.
Week 3: Reproducible Research Checklist & Evidence-based Data Analysis
This week covers what one could call a basic check list for ensuring that a data analysis is reproducible. While it's not absolutely sufficient to follow the check list, it provides a necessary minimum standard that would be applicable to almost any area of analysis.
Week 4: Case Studies & Commentaries
This week there are two
Reviews
TOP REVIEWS FROM REPRODUCIBLE RESEARCH
My favorite course, at least it gives me an argument why scripted statistics is awesome and can be applied to a number of data related activities. Recycling chunks of code has proven useful to me.
A very important course that greatly improved my ability to communicate the findings of any sort of data analysis that I perform. This is a critical skill to acquire to "deliver the means."
If you are at university (PhD student, academic, researcher, etc.) then you kind of know most of the "theory". However, practising R was a huge plus (personally, I liked the Week 4 task).
Of course, I liked this course. There was even an extra non-graded assignment. Plus two graded assignments. Quality instruction videos and lots of practice. Everything a learner needs.
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