Data Science Programming Resources

These days, being a data scientist means being a programmer too. While there are numerous languages out there, and every person has their opinion on which are worth learning, there are two that are most common for data science purposes: Python and R. Also popular are SQL, MATLAB, and Stata. In this section, you’ll find resources for learning these languages, with a mix of beginner’s guides to advanced graduate-level courses. If you are aware of any free resources not listed here, please share them in a comment below or in an email to hellomenti@gmail.com!

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Python

General-purpose programming language, useful for data science, web development, and software development.

• MIT Intro to Computer Science and Programming in Python course

• Style Guide for Python Code by Rossum, Warsaw, & Coghlan

• Minimally Sufficient Pandas by Ted Petrou

• Data Scientist with Python by DataCamp

• r/learnpython

• Python Courses by Code Academy

• Collection of Python guides for those coming from R by Joscelin Rocha Hidalgo

• Pyslackers - An open community for Python programming enthusiasts.

• Python Discord

• PyLadies - mentorship group with a focus on helping more women become active participants and leaders in the Python open-source community

R/RStudio

Specialized language which is highly useful for statistical analysis and data visualization. Usually run through the RStudio interface.

• Data Scientist with R by DataCamp

• A Succinct Intro to R by Steve Haroz

• STAT 545 - UBC course on R and data science

• Text Mining with R by Silge & Robinson

• RStudio Cheatsheets

• The R Tidyverse Style Guide by Hadley Wickham

• R for Data Science by Hadley Wickham

• Intro to R by Hans H. Sievertsen - how to load, process, and visualize data in R

• Big Book of R by Oscar Baruffa

• List of open sources books about R by Pere A. Taberner

SQL

A language for manipulating structured data, effective with large datasets. One of the most common languages for actually gathering the data needed to perform data science.

• edX database of online courses

• The SQL Tutorial for Data Analysis by Mode

• Stanford Databases course

MATLAB

A mathematical programming meant for statistical computing, also has tools for data visualization.

• edX database of online courses

Stata

A highly specialized tool best suited for running econometric and regression analysis.

• Stata Coding Guide by Julian Reif

• Development Research in Practice (Stata Style Guide) by DIME Analytics

• Stata Cheat Sheets

• Stata Workflow Guide by Asjad Naqvi

• Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) in Stata by Asjad Naqvi

• Coding Style Guide by Michael Stepner

• Tips for managing large-scale datasets efficiently in Stata by Pere A. Taberner

Other Data Science Topics

• Python, R, and Stata Implementation of Statistical Methods

• Code and Data for the Social Sciences: A Practitioner’s Guide by Gentzkow & Shapiro

• GitHub Replication Template by Dequette

• Git: A Guide for Economists by Frank Pinter

• R, Stata, and Python Resources by Gabors Data Analysis