Computing has always been an essential ingredient of statistical practice. While probability theory provides us with a mathematical foundation for describing data and studying statistical inference, computing technologies act as a medium through which analyses are actually realized. Our ability to manipulate data and to audition new methodologies depends on and is limited by our familiarity with computing technologies. To some extent, even our notion of what constitutes "data" is a product of our background in computing.

Through a series of group projects, we will study tools for "exploratory computing." We will emphasize programming and scripting languages over point-and-click interfaces. We hope to instill a problem solving ability so that you will learn languages on your own, cull online documentation or tutorials, find books and manuals.

The next two lectures...

We begin with operating systems, with Unix in particular. We then move to some exercises involving defining "data." We examine simple data formats, both structured (the relational model) and semi-structured (XML, JSON).