Learn EDA (exploratory data analysis) from the experts

The Facebook data science team has put together a great course on EDA at Udacity.

EDA stands for exploratory data analysis. It is the beginning of any data analysis when you have a pile of data (or datasets) and you need to get a feel for what you're looking at. It's when you develop some intuition about what sort of methodology would be appropriate to analyze the data. 

Not surprisingly, graphical methods form a big part of EDA. You will commonly see histograms, boxplots, and scatter plots. The scatterplot matrix (see my discussion of this) makes an appearance here as well.

The course uses R and in particular, Hadley's ggplot package throughout. I highly recommend the course for anyone who wants to become an expert in ggplot. ggplot does use quite a bit of proprietary syntax. This EDA course offers a lot of instruction in coding. You do have to work hard, but you will learn a lot. By working hard, I mean reading supplementary materials, and doing the exercises throughout the course. As good instruction goes, they expect students to discover things, and do not feed you bullet points.

While this course is not freeThis course is free, plus the quality of the instruction is heads and shoulders above other MOOCs out there. The course is designed from the ground up for online instruction, and it shows. If you have tried other online courses, you will immediately notice the difference in quality. For example, the people in these videos talk directly to you, and not a bunch of tuition-paying students in some remote classroom.

Sign up before they get started at Udacity. Disclaimer: No one paid me to write this post.

Comments

[Mutter]

For me it says the course is $150/month, how come that you claim the course is free?

[Sameer Gauria]

You can ignore the price and click on free courseware to access all the content. The paid track is for extra non-automated instruction. Explained a bit better here : https://www.udacity.com/success