E24-08: Introduction to Data Analytics for Analytical Chemists

One-Day Course:
Sunday, Nov. 17; 8:30am – 5:00pm
Dr. Mary Kate Donais, Saint Anselm College, Manchester, NH

COURSE DESCRIPTION
Are you curious about all the Data Analytics courses being offered online and don’t know how they might relate to your work? Do you have little to no experience with coding? Do you want to use easily accessible and FREE software for data analysis? This one-day course is for you! Students will be provided with an active-learning-based introduction to data analytics for analytical chemists using R and Excel. Course content includes data visualization, testing the significance of data, finding structure in data, and process automation. Worked examples will include data sets collected in undergraduate courses that could easily be adapted to teaching and research. Analysis of spectral data from automated multi-file consolidation to cluster analysis and principal component analysis will be walked through step by step with students. Students will leave with copies of all code and data used in the workshop and the confidence to take their data analysis to the next level. The course is geared for anyone, students to faculty to senior researchers, that want to integrate coding into their work or teaching.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Anyone interested in learning how to use R and Excel for data analytics – students, teachers, early career researchers, etc.

TOPICS
  1. Install R and RStudio
  2. R and RStudio basics and practice
  3. Statistics review and types of data
  4. Visualizing and summarizing data
  5. Significance tests
  6. Finding structure in data
  7. Automation with R scripts
  8. Practice with additional data sets

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Mary Kate Donais
earned her BS in Chemistry from Bucknell University and PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Following positions at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and VG Elemental, she joined the faculty at Saint Anselm College where she is currently a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Forensic Science and the Barbara Stahl Fellow in Science and the Humanities. Mary Kate’s research focus is on applications of atomic spectroscopy and portable instrumentation, especially in the fields of archaeology and cultural heritage analysis. The vast majority of this research was conducted by undergraduate students. She has served many volunteer and elected roles within the Society for Applied Spectroscopy and FACSS/SciX