Data Science the Fun Way

Materials for CS 418: Intro to Data Science at UIC. I'm building this out during Summer 2026, in preparation for the Fall 2026 semester. I'm aiming to develop an adventurous, practice-based approach to data science, with lots of exercises to do "by hand" (I was inspired by Tom Yeh's "AI by Hand" series).

Sources consulted

• Mining of Massive Datasets (Stanford)
• Learning Data Science (UC Berkeley)
• Python Data Science Handbook (O'Reilly)
• Intro to Statistical Learning (Stanford)
• Data Feminism (MIT Press)
• Practical Data Ethics (fast.ai)
• Fundamentals of Data Visualization (UT Austin)
• Computational and Inferential Thinking (UC Berkeley)
• A Course in Machine Learning (UMD)

Materials in progress

• Demo slide deck
• Frequently asked questions
• Ethics in Data Science Mini-book

Worksheets

• Worksheet template

Schedule