A Brief Introduction to Working with Data and Spreadsheets¶
This section offers a curated list of existing tutorials for starting to work with data generally, and some ways into thinking about spreadsheets in particular.
“What is Data” by School of Data: A quick and clear beginner’s overview to understanding data types (qualitative and quantitative) and categories (categorical, discreet, and continuous) as well as unstructured versus structured data.
“What is Data / What is Data Literacy” by Eastern Michigan University: A video/slideshow introductory tutorial on defining data and data literacy, identifying data types, and two forms of statistical analysis. It includes a short quiz at the end. Please note: there is some overlap between this tutorial and “What is Data” by School of Data, but I recommend them both if you are new to working with data.
“Representing Data” by Khan Academy: This is a very clear and simple video refresher that shows a few ways to represent the same information (tables, charts, lists, frequency, and range). Please note: whether your data looks like the simple chart from the Khan Academy video or a massive dataset: do keep the same data types in one column.
“Sort and Filter: the Basics of Spreadsheets” by School of Data: A quick textual tutorial on basic spreadsheet skills (navigating, sorting, and filtering) with Google Sheets (though the skills are translatable to other similar formats such as Excel or LibreOffice Calc).
“Common Misconceptions” by School of Data: Quick textual overview to data and visualization traps and proposed solutions (averages, chart sizes, timelines, correlation and causation, context, % changes, and base rate fallacy).
“Data Provenance” by School of Data: A short overview on documenting the history, versions, and processing of a dataset including tips and suggested tools (Excel, OpenRefine, GitHub, DataHub).