Pre-course Requirements & Preparation

Before starting this course, please complete the items below.

Participant bio

As soon as you are able, please send a blurb introducing yourself and a photo to dataanalytics@umd.edu with "Participant Bio" in the subject line. Your bio will be included on the "participants" tab of this website under the course for which you are registered.

pre-course survey

Please complete the survey linked below. This is purely to assess participants' current knowledge base to help tailor some of the instruction material and create initial project teams, so please do not worry if some of the questions are difficult to answer. The survey should only take ~10-15 minutes.

Intro to Python for Data Science

This course will be taught in Python. Please complete the Intro to Python for Data Science by Data Camp before attending the first in-person training day. The total estimated time for this online training module is four hours, and you can save progress to complete it in sections if convenient.

intro to jupyter notebooks

The majority of the training program is taught via Jupyter notebooks, a software that has gained popularity in many research and data science circles because it can both run different coding languages and allows for extensive text documentation surrounding the code. Please read the “basic overview”, “practical introduction”, and the "best practices and tips” sections to begin the program with a general understanding of Jupyter.

laptop and smartphone requirements

Ensure you have a functioning laptop that can connect to WiFi and have a functioning major web browser (Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer). If you are able, please follow the instructions here to download and configure the NoMachine remote desktop client.

It is also highly recommended to bring a smartphone with either FreeOTP or Google Authenticator installed.