Looking for online courses to learn more on data visualizationI found this graduate course from the Indiana University. It stills runs in 2022, check it out. It had in-house student of the data science or similar degree and then it allowed other students to join via MOOC, a sort of wonderful arrangement really. It allowed me to be in touched for the first time with people workin in this discipline. I had a strong natural science researcher background but was lacking the technical skills. Those students could just do anything! The foremost reason: it included a final project with a real client. Hands-on!

From their course description: “This course aims to improve data visualization literacy—the expertise and skills needed to read and make data visualizations. It teaches theoretical foundations and advanced tools that help turn data into insights. Specifically, the course covers:
• Visualization frameworks that guide development,
• data analysis algorithms that enable extraction of structures and trends in data,
• major visualization and interaction techniques,
• discussions of systems that drive research and development, and
• trends, opportunities, and challenges in the field.

Exercises

Final work for a real client

I joined the group working for EOL’s Global Biotic Interactions . The project asked students to use the GloBI datasets and develop methods to analyze millions of records and show species interaction patterns between thousands of organisms. In the end the focus was about showing the data gaps, that is, what species, times and areas had less coverage

The project was defended in a presentation by the on-site students, summarized in a poster

written as a paper in Zenodo

More information in this blog entrance from GloBi