datasciencelabs/2020

BST 260: Introduction to Data Science

Welcome to BST 260: Introduction to Data Science

• Course materials for Fall 2020 can be found here.
• Official course webpage here: http://datasciencelabs.github.io

Instructor

• Dr. Heather Mattie
• Lecturer on Biostatistics
• Co-Director, Health Data Science Master's Program
• hemattie@hsph.harvard.edu

Teaching Assistants

• Andy Shi (andyshi@g.harvard.edu)
• Jane Liang (jwliang@g.harvard.edu)
• Kareem Carr (kareemcarr@g.harvard.edu)
• Lara Maleyeff (lmaleyeff@g.harvard.edu)
• Santiago Romero-Brufau (santiagoromerobrufau@hsph.harvard.edu)

Downloading course materials using Git with RStudio

You can use Git within RStudio to download the course materials. If you haven't cloned the repository before, follow these instructions:

1. Click on the green "Clone or Download" on Github and copy the link.
2. Open RStudio, and go to File > New Project > Version Control > Git, and paste in the link you just copied. Under "Create Project as Subdirectory of", browse and select a folder where you want the course materials to go.
3. Press "Create Project". This will create a folder called 2020 in the folder you selected in step 2.
4. Now, you can open this project using the projects tab in the upper right of RStudio, or going to File > Open Project and then navigating to the 2020 folder and opening the .Rproj file.

If you already cloned the repository outside of RStudio (e.g. using Git Bash), you can associate the directory that was created in that step with RStudio. In RStudio, go to File > New Project > Existing Directory, and then navigate / click on the 2020 folder. Then click "Create Project". Then you can follow step 4 above to open the project when you launch RStudio. You can read more about RStudio projects here: https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/200526207-Using-Projects

Updating Course Repo

Once you cloned the course repository and want to get updates, you must use git pull to get updates.

In RStudio, if you followed the instructions above, simply navigate to the Git tab and press the Pull button. In terminal / Git bash, use cd to navigate to the 2020 folder, then run git pull.

Taking Notes on Course Materials

If you wish to take notes and write in the course materials, you can save a copy of the file you want to take notes on with the filename containing personal. For example, if you want to take notes on the file 00-motivation.Rmd, save it as 00-motivation_personal.Rmd. Then, you can edit the 00-motivation_personal.Rmd file. We have configured Git to ignore any files that contain personal in the filename, so any changes you make won't show up in Git. This will allow you to update the course repo without any issues.