Check this page every week for updates on course content and requirements.
π₯οΈ Week 01 29 Sep 2025 - 03 Oct 2025
π Formative
Setup and First Data Exploration
Reserve 1-2 hours to set up and interact with the platforms of communication (Slack) and for coding (Nuvolos) we will use throughout the course as well as to experience the kind of data analysis you will be doing in the near future.
Youβll use a Jupyter notebook to explore yearly heatwave counts, then compare your step-by-step process with an AI-only approach to understand when each method works best.
Note
No need to install anything!
All assessed work in this course can be done on Nuvolos Cloud with VS Code preconfigured. You do not need to install anything on your machine unless you prefer to. If you do, we will provide an optional local setup note later in the course, but Nuvolos remains the default.
π Support
Click here to see how to get help this week
We love hearing from you! Truly! Donβt hesitate to contact us for help.
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Need 1-to-1 support? Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For class changes, extensions, or other administrative queries, email Kevin ().
From Data to Insight: The Importance of Clean Data
Introduction to course goals and assessment. Reveal solution to the formative. Discuss the AI diagnostic: when AI helps versus when it fails. Notebooks as a professional tool.
Build on Week 01βs yearly heatwave data by exploring raw daily temperature records. Learn to load CSV files into pandas, apply basic DataFrame operations like filtering and sorting, and connect daily observations to the summary data you worked with in practice.
π₯οΈ Week 02 06 Oct 2025 - 10 Oct 2025
π Formative
Python Foundations & File Management
Complete foundational Python lessons through DataQuest, focusing on variables, data types, and collections. Learn to organise your workspace with proper folder structures and document your learning using Markdown formatting in Jupyter notebooks.
Tip
Actively post questions to Slack or attend support sessions if you get stuck or confused about any of the tasks.
π Support
Click here to see how to get help this week
There is a way to get help every single day of the week. Donβt hesitate to contact us for help. We love hearing from you!
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For class changes, extensions, or other administrative queries, email Kevin ().
Connect your DataQuest Python foundations to real data analysis. Explore how collections (lists and dictionaries) relate to DataFrames from Week 01. See a live API demonstration with weather data and preview next weekβs JSON work.
Practice connecting the Python collections you learned in DataQuest (lists and dictionaries) to pandas DataFrame operations. Apply bracket notation and indexing skills to real data analysis tasks.
π₯οΈ Week 03 13 Oct 2025 - 17 Oct 2025
π Formative
File Systems, JSON Structure, and Git Basics
Learn to navigate file systems using Terminal commands, understand JSON as familiar dictionary patterns from Week 02, and apply Git basics for professional project organisation. Practice connecting data formats to appropriate use cases.
Note
Warm-up: Shell-it (paths & terminals)
Play βShell-it: The London Episodeβ at least 10 times: https://shell-it.vercel.app/. Spend one minute reflecting on paths and directories before opening the Nuvolos terminal. This helps connect mental models of locations with real filesystem navigation.
Tip
Actively post questions to Slack or attend support sessions if you get stuck or confused about any of the tasks.
π Support
Click here to see how to get help this week
There is a way to get help every single day of the week. Donβt hesitate to contact us for help. We love hearing from you!
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For extensions or other administrative queries, email Kevin ( )
Build on your Week 03 practice with file systems and Git. Explore different data formats (CSV vs JSON vs XML) and learn when to use each. Practice Git fundamentals including commit, push, and branch operations for professional project organisation.
Apply your Week 03 practice skills to normalise nested JSON data into tidy tables. Set up a proper repository structure following professional conventions, practice commit message standards, and apply documentation best practices.
π₯οΈ Week 04 20 Oct 2025 - 24 Oct 2025
π Formative
Multi-City Heatwave Comparison
Build your first complete data pipeline: fetch historical temperature data from Open-Meteo for London and one European city, transform the JSON data into a usable format, and create a comparative summary table.
Tip
This assignment will help you practice for the upcoming summative assessment. Actively post questions to Slack or attend support sessions if you get stuck.
π’ Release
Mini-Project 1 (20%) - Weather Data Analysis
Instructions will be released this week. Deadline: Week 06 Thursday 8 pm.
π Support
Click here to see how to get help this week
There is a way to get help every single day of the week. Donβt hesitate to contact us for help. We love hearing from you!
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For extensions or other administrative queries, email Kevin ( )
Understand why tidy, reproducible steps matter for data analysis. Learn how Python collections (lists and dictionaries) connect to pandas DataFrames, and practice essential operations like selection, grouping, and creating simple plots.
Work with real-world messy data to understand when to clean versus when to investigate inconsistencies. Practice applying transformations to datasets and learn to document your data quality decisions clearly.
π₯οΈ Week 05 27 Oct 2025 - 31 Oct 2025
π Support
Click here to see how to get help this week
There is a way to get help every single day of the week. Donβt hesitate to contact us for help. We love hearing from you!
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For extensions or other administrative queries, email Kevin ( )
Learn seaborn fundamentals with a consistent visual style including appropriate font sizes, figure dimensions, and colour palettes. Understand when and how to deviate from standards for specific communication goals.
Critique effective and ineffective visualisations from real sources. Practice creating multiple chart types from the same data, learn to justify your choices for different audiences, and develop skills in writing compelling narrative titles.
π₯οΈ Week 06 03 Nov 2025 - 07 Nov 2025
π Reading Week
Focus on Mini-Project 1. Support sessions available.
β²οΈ Deadline
Submit your Mini-Project 1 (20%) via GitHub until Thursday 8 pm.
π₯οΈ Week 07 10 Nov 2025 - 14 Nov 2025
π Support
Click here to see how to get help this week
There is a way to get help every single day of the week. Donβt hesitate to contact us for help. We love hearing from you!
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For extensions or other administrative queries, email Kevin ( )
Tidy data principles and database design concepts. Transform wide and long datasets, set up SQLite, practise SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, and compare pandas versus SQL approaches.
π’ Release
Mini-Project 2 (30%) - London Travel Time Analysis
Instructions will be released this week. Deadline: Week 10 Wednesday 8 pm.
π₯οΈ Week 08 17 Nov 2025 - 21 Nov 2025
π Support
Click here to see how to get help this week
There is a way to get help every single day of the week. Donβt hesitate to contact us for help. We love hearing from you!
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For extensions or other administrative queries, email Kevin ( )
Joining multiple JSON-derived tables, strategies for stable keys, deduplication, and handling rate limits with caching to data/raw. Using lookup services when you genuinely need a key.
Joining at the right grain, avoiding accidental cartesian products, and retry and backoff for flaky endpoints. Integrate two or three sources into one tidy table, validate join keys, and implement basic caching.
π₯οΈ Week 09 24 Nov 2025 - 28 Nov 2025
π Support
Click here to see how to get help this week
There is a way to get help every single day of the week. Donβt hesitate to contact us for help. We love hearing from you!
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For extensions or other administrative queries, email Kevin ( )
Designing a Good Database Schema and Visualisation Refinement
Relational design patterns, keys and constraints, and how schema choices impact analysis. Revisiting message-first visualisation with more complex tables.
Aligning schema with analysis questions and refining visualisations for clarity and honesty. Refine plots and narratives to support your findings.
π₯οΈ Week 10 01 Dec 2025 - 05 Dec 2025
π Support
Click here to see how to get help this week
There is a way to get help every single day of the week. Donβt hesitate to contact us for help. We love hearing from you!
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For extensions or other administrative queries, email Kevin ( )
Production-like data workflows and scalability considerations. Design a multi-stage pipeline, optimise SQL queries, and practise advanced joins and aggregations.
β²οΈ Deadline
Submit your Mini-Project 2 (30%) via GitHub until Wednesday 8 pm.
π’ Release
Group Project (50%)
Instructions will be released this week. Due next term (Winter Term Week 03 for Autumn cohorts). The exact date will be provided on the group project page.
There is a way to get help every single day of the week. Donβt hesitate to contact us for help. We love hearing from you!
Here are the best ways to get help with your DS105A studies this week:
Slack: Post questions or comments to the #help channel at any time. Jon monitors regularly throughout the week, with dedicated support from Riya (Monday 6-8pm) and Tabby (Tuesday 5-7pm).
Office Hours: Book a 15-minute slot via StudentHub by searching for our names:
Jonathan Cardoso-Silva (Jon): Wednesday 2-5pm (in-person, COL.1.03)
Riya Chhikara: Friday 9-10am (in-person, DSI visualisation studio COL.1.06)
Drop-in Sessions: Pedro hosts drop-in sessions Wednesday 2-4pm at DSI visualisation studio (COL.1.06). No booking required, but please confirm attendance via e-mail to Kevin ().
Admin: For extensions or other administrative queries, email Kevin ( )
