Lessons From My Data Science Course

In the past few years, I have been reading about and intrigued with all the discussion about "Big Data."  Being a math teacher, I teach the basics of data analysis, regression and some basic inferential statistics. However, I've never truly understood the predictive analytics that someone like Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com does with his election forecasts. So I've decided to take an online course, through Coursera, techniques in Big Data just for my personal growth, and perhaps I could bring some of the things I learn into the classroom.

The course comes in nine units, the first one being called "The Data Scientists Toolbox."  This section is getting us all set up with the right programs that we will use and to practice using them in a very basic manner. As many of you know, I don't have much of an instinct around computers and tend to be quite intimidated by them and making mistakes and not knowing how to get around the my problems. So we had to install these programs called "R," a programming language and "R-Studio," the editor in which we will program. In addition we learned about Git and set up an account GitHub.  This was all done through video lectures.

Along with three quizzes (multiple choice), each unit ends with a project to demonstrate our mastery of the tasks.  This time there were four.  Three of them I completed without much difficulty, but one of them stumped me. Usually, I am one to want to finish what I start but I was stumped and I was stressing over it. Honestly, if I would have stepped back and realized that I had very little riding on this, but I was simply reverting to student mode and wanting to "get it right."

Over the course of a couple days, I used my resources.  I googled things.  I read through the class discussion forums and even posted a question myself asking my fellow classmates about where I was stuck. Then this morning, when I was doing something else on my computer, I saw that there was a folder that had the document I was trying to figure out how to edit.  I opened it and everything made sense. 

The last part of this task was to upload the document to the GitHub.  Earlier I was also having trouble with this as well and was getting errors that no one mentioned in the forums.  I was in the weeds!  But I methodically followed the instructions of the video someone posted in the forums and everything worked out.  I'm not sure I could do it on my own yet, but I learned that typing the commands were the same as saving a program and then moving it into Dropbox, where Dropbox is the equivalent of GitHub.

It's crazy that at 45, I'm only now learning to trust that if I sleep on things that I will eventually figure them out.  I need to not stress about getting things the first time around.  I tell this to my students but I'm actually living it out in my own life right now as well.  I'm also more confident now in my ability to work with these programs.  Bring on Unit 2.

The Redwoods

Crescent City.  Chinese Food?  Yes!  Quality? Terrible!

Right across the street from our hotel was the county fair.  I felt it imperative to take Onions for him to experience this slice of Americana.

We didn't go on any rides, nor eat funnel cake, but we did check out some music and.....

....checked out the prize winning animals.

This was the winning rabbit in the 6+ month to 2 years category.  It has little fat and good muscle tone due to only eating grain and no fruits or vegetables.  And it's going to be sold for edible consumption.

The highlight of this North Coast drive was the mighty coast Redwoods.

In front of the Trees of Mystery is Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox.  Everything is bigger up here.

Photos simply can't capture the grandeur and size of the trees.  350 feet tall!

It's really red wood.

In Eureka (Chinese noodles in the motel room), there was an advertisement for Women's Roller Derby. I couldn't convince Onions to join me.  It's kind of like football on skates....lots of blocking and defense.

South of Eureka is the famed Avenue of the Giants....this is what it's like to drive that stretch of highway.

And of course, we paid the $6 to drive our car through a tree.

Our last night of the trip was spent just north of the Napa Valley.  When driving we saw the smoke of the Clear Lake Fire block the white clouds.  Fascinating juxtaposition.

Our treat, was a mud bath in Calistoga.  Dinner was at a Chinese/Vietnamese/Sushi combo restaurant where the owner was so happy to speak Chinese with us. Quality, again, not so good.

San Francisco!!  This was supposed to be the picture with the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands......but we got fog.  Oh, San Francisco, you don't disappoint.

Oregon Coast

After a night spent in Portland (Chinese food, yes), we headed to the Oregon Coast and joined it at Lincoln City.  The Central Coast is beautiful, but the drama comes later, down on the southern coast.

It's beautiful, but upon hours and hours of coastal driving, it becomes...meh.

A lighthouse just north of Florence where we stayed our first night on the Coast.  (Chinese food, kind of as we cooked Ramen in the room)

But then comes the Dunes.........

Standing on the beach when it's windy, you see and feel the streams of blown sand.

And they create the 45 mile long, and 2 mile wide Oregon Dunes.

For $15, we took an hour long buggy (the slow plodding one, not the fast one that goes up and down at highway speeds) all over the Dunes.

The flat parts is where lots of people race around with their ATVs and motorcycles.

South of Coos Bay is where Highway 101 turns inland and the read high cliffs begin.

The scenery gets grander....

....the beaches more secluded and isolated....

....and the rock crags get bigger!

Randle and Mt. St. Helens

All packed for the move from Seattle to San Francisco.

Since this is kind of our "honeymoon," we took five days to do the drive. On our way to Mt. St. Helens, we did a quick pit stop in Randle, where I worked in the summer of 1991 for the US Forest Service.

This is the Ranger Station out of which I was based.  It used to be called Randle, but since the Packwood station was closed an sold off, the two were merged and named Cowlitz Valley.

The TALL TIMBERS was a bar that we would hang out at....and it's still around, even remodeled and upgraded.

The bunks that Kristin, I and the other summer workers are still in use.

The forest road names are still the same.  The 23 and 25 roads!

The 25 road south out of Randle takes you to Windy Ridge from where you can take in the view of the crater of Mt. St. Helens.  Here we are on approach....

And here we are from Windy Ridge.  A small glacier is actually forming right near the bulge in the crater!

The plain that was directly in the blast zone.

Spirit Lake still has many of the dead logs floating on the surface.  Interestingly, the mudflows blocked the natural outlet of the lake into a fork of the Toutle River, so the Army Corps (or USFS) dug a tunnel that drains the lake.

Mt. Adams to the east.

The pattern of the trees blowndown....but also nature is doing its thing.  We stayed the night in Portland and on the Chinese food report front....yes, we ate Chinese food.