DSA 210: Introduction to Data Science (Spring 2024 - 2025)
Syllabus
Instructors:
Section A: Selim Balcısoy ([Link]@[Link])
Section B: Özgür Asar ([Link]@[Link])
Assistants
TAs
Berke Odacı (berkeodaci@[Link])
Ceren Tarar ([Link]@[Link])
Erfan Tarmhammadi ([Link]@[Link])
Kerem Aydın ([Link]@[Link])
Mansur Kiraz ([Link]@[Link])
LAs
Selin Lara Adalı ([Link]@[Link])
Bora Çelikörs ([Link]@[Link])
Alp Önder Yener ([Link]@[Link])
Mehmet Altunören ([Link]@[Link])
Hüseyin Doğan Türk ([Link]@[Link])
Mehtap Güneş (mgunes@[Link])
Section A Lectures
- Monday 12:40-14:30, FASS G062
- Wednesday 10:40-11:30, FENS G077
Section B Lectures
- Tuesday 11:40 – 12:30, FASS G062
- Friday 10:40 – 12:30, FENS G077
Recitations
- A: Monday 14:40-16:30 FENS G035 (Erfan Tarmhammadi)
- B: Monday 16:40-18:30 FENS G035 (Berke Odacı)
- C: Tuesday 12:40-14:30 FENS G035 (Ceren Tarar)
- D: Tuesday 16:40-18:30 FENS G032 (Selin Lara Adalı)
- E: Monday 14:40-16:30 FASS 1010 (Hüseyin Doğan Türk)
- F: Wednesday 11:40-13:30 FASS G052 (Bora Çelikörs)
- G: Wednesday 08.40-10:30 FENS L027 (Mansur Kiraz)
- H: Friday 17:40-19:30 FENS L027 (Kerem Aydın)
Office Hours (Lecturers)
- By appointment
Office Hours (Assistants)
- Mondays 19:40-20:30 (Mehmet Altunören)
[Link]
- Tuesdays 18:40-19:30 (Mehtap Güneş)
[Link]
- Wednesdays 18:40-19:30 (Mehmet Altunören)
[Link]
- Thursdays 17:40-18:30 (Alp Önder Yener)
[Link]
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- Fridays 16:40-17:30 (Alp Önder Yener)
[Link]
Notes: Both lecture and recitation notes will be uploaded into Sucourse.
All email communication will be done through a special course email address and one of the DSA210 team
members will respond to you.
We won’t respond emails sent to other addresses than [Link]@[Link]
Course Outline:
Time Topic Notes
Week 1 Introduction Lectures will be for 2 hours
(05 Feb Wed - 07 Feb Fri)
Week 2 Exploratory data analysis
(10 Feb Mon - 14 Feb Fri)
Week 3 Data Visualization
(17 Feb Mon - 21 Feb Fri)
Week 4 Probability review
(24 Feb Mon - 28 Feb Fri)
Week 5 Hypothesis testing
(03 Mar Mon - 07 Mar Fri)
Week 6 Hypothesis testing
(10 Mar Mon - 14 Mar Fri)
Week 7 Hypothesis testing
(17 Mar Mon - 21 Mar Fri)
Week 8 Case Studies Selim Hoca will be teaching both sections
(24 Mar Mon - 28 Mar Fri)
Week 9 Ramadan Holiday (29 March Saturday – 1
(31 Mar Mon – 04 Apr Fri) April Monday) + It is
Spring Break
Week 10 Machine Learning - Supervised Midterm week (will be held on 13th April)
(07 Apr Mon - 11 Apr Fri)
Week 11 Machine Learning - Supervised
(14 Apr Mon - 18 Apr Fri)
Week 12 Machine Learning - Supervised
(21 Apr Mon - 25 Apr Fri)
Week 13 Machine Learning -
(28 Apr Mon - 02 May Fri) Unsupervised
Week 14
(05 May Mon - 09 May Fri) Machine Learning -
Unsupervised
Week 15 Causal Inference Özgür Hoca will be teaching both sections
(12 May Mon - 16 May Fri)
Week 16 DS project life cycle and ethics 19 May Monday is a holiday, there is a
(19 May Mon – 23 May Fri) Future directions: textual data, recitation. Students who have recitation on
deep learning, reinforcement this day can attend any other that they
learning, image analysis choose (only for this week).
Recitation Outline
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Time Topic
Week 1 No recitation
(05 Feb Wed - 07 Sept Fri)
Week 2 Python Intro
(10 Feb Mon - 14 Feb Fri)
Week 3 Exploratory data analysis
(17 Feb Mon - 21 Feb Fri)
Week 4 Data Visualization
(24 Feb Mon - 28 Feb Fri)
Week 5 Probability review
(03 Mar Mon - 07 Mar Fri)
Week 6 Hypothesis testing
(10 Mar Mon - 14 Mar Fri)
HW1 questions to be sent on 12th March and the solution key to be released on
19 March. Questions shall be about exploratory data analysis, data visualization,
probability and hypothesis testing.
Week 7 Hypothesis testing
(17 Mar Mon - 21 Mar Fri)
Week 8 Web scraping
(24 Mar Mon - 28 Mar Fri)
Week 9 No recitation
(31 Mar Mon – 04 Apr Fri)
Week 10 Project review
(07 Apr Mon - 11 Apr Fri)
Week 11 Machine Learning - Supervised
(14 Apr Mon - 18 Apr Fri)
Week 12 Machine Learning - Supervised
(21 Apr Mon - 25 Apr Fri)
Week 13 Machine Learning - Supervised
(28 Apr Mon - 02 May Fri)
Week 14 Machine Learning - Unsupervised
(05 May Mon - 09 May Fri)
Week 15 Machine Learning - Unsupervised
(12 May Mon - 16 May Fri)
HW2 questions to be sent on 12th May and the solution key to be released on
20May. Questions shall be about supervised and unsupervised machine learning
methods
Week 16 Causal Inference
(19 May Mon – 23 May Fri)
Course summary: Data science topics span a large variety of disciplines and require a collection of skills. This
course is intended to cover data science's fundamental principles and techniques, emphasizing data-centric
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quantitative thinking. We will tour the basic data science techniques from manipulation and summarizing the
essential characteristics of a data set, basic statistical modeling, visualization, and prediction
Objectives and learning outcomes: Fundamentals of data analytics pipelines: i) data collection and ethics, ii) basic
statistics and hypothesis testing, iii) exploratory data analysis, iv) information extraction from basic data types, and
v) building machine learning models.
Prerequisites: IF100 and MATH 203
Grading Policy: These percentages are tentative and subject to change.
● Midterm (35%): Exam will be held in person
● Final (35%): Exam will be held in person during the final exam week
● Project (30%): The project will be done individually by each student, and they are expected to analyze,
visualize and communicate a dataset on a topic that they find interesting. There will be intermediary
deadlines to be announced later. (More details will be announced in the following weeks).
● Homework: There will be a few assignments on data collection, explanatory analysis, and machine
learning experiment. The assignments will not be graded, though there will be related questions in the
exams.
Make-up Policy:
● Students who have valid medical reports that are submitted to the University and accepted by it will be
eligible to attend the make-up exam.
● There will be only one make-up exam at the end of the semester (after the final exam).
● If a student misses both the midterm and final exams and is eligible to take a make-up for both, there will
be a single exam that will count for both of these.
● The topics will cover the whole semester.
Class Policies and advice:
● Regular attendance is essential and class participation is expected.
● Students have the responsibility of backing up all their data and code. At the end of the semester, they are
expected to prepare a public release of their code and data with proper documentation.
LLMs:
● You are encouraged to use LLMs in this course only to get advice/help. Please make sure that you do not
submit the work that the LMM generates.
Academic honesty: All students must follow the university guidelines of academic integrity.
[Link]
Main references: There is no dedicated textbook for this course. Suggested textbooks are given below:
- G James, D Witten, T Hastie, R Tibshirani, J Taylor (2023) Introduction to Statistical Learning, with
Applications in Python. Springer.
- Peter Bruce, Andrew Bruce & Peter Gedeck Practical Statistics for Data Scientists: 50+ Essential Concepts
Using R and Python. 2nd edition. O’Reilly.
- Joel Grus. Data Science from Scratch. O’Reilly.