This two-day intensive at Goldsmiths focussed on handling data with spreadsheets, and managing statistics with spreadsheets.

Day 1: Handling data with spreadsheets
10am-5pm Wednesday 20 September 2017

Spreadsheets are the basic tool of data analysis and investigation for a range of professions from social marketing through to data science. Good data handling skills are essential for the public researcher or marketer and in this course we cover the three central skills, sorting, filtering and pivots that are required to analyse data sets. Although our emphasis is on using Excel we will also look at using Google Sheets to perform the same level of analysis.

Participants will learn how to:

• use shortcuts in order to navigate large data sets effectively
• use correct formatting in order to represent numbers, money and percentages
• use formulas in order to calculate new columns
• use formulas to calculate percentage change, rates and per capita values
• use sorting in order to find outliers in data sets
• use filtering in order to produce subsets of data for further analysis
• use pivot tables to summarise and analyse data sets
• use export and import functions to produce or consume other common file types.

Day 2: Statistics with spreadsheets
9.30am-5pm Thursday 21 September 2017

Data ‘evidence’ is the fundamental principle of many contemporary decision making processes in various levels of business or government. Whatever your opinions on this trend, a lack of data skills can hamper your engagement with the issues. Building on Day 1, we look at the central principles of modern descriptive statistics such as measures of centrality and distribution. We also take a brief look at the world of inferential statistics and probability. Throughout the day we will use current data sets involving crime, health and the census.

Participants will learn how to:

• use a spreadsheet to produce and check summary statistics from large data sets
• use a measures of centrality in order to describe large datasets
• use a spreadsheet to calculate measures of spread
• use charts in a spreadsheet to do visual analysis of data sets
• use a spreadsheet to perform basic trend analysis
• identify tools to manage very large datasets used in Big Data.

Part of Goldsmiths' 8-day intensive Digital Bootcamp

Course tutor

Andy Freeman has 30 years of experience with corporates, startups, non-profits and arts organisations, from Apple Computers to Islington Council. He now teaches award-winning students on Goldsmiths’ Digital Journalism, Digital Sociology, Creative Computing and Computer Science degree programmes. Andy Freeman on LinkedIn