The following is a list of online courses and other resources that might be useful preparation for the UBC MDS program. Completion of these courses does not replace the official program prerequisites. Rather, this page is mainly intended for entering students who may wish to reinforce their preparation before the program starts.
Disclaimer: We have not vetted these courses ourselves but rather selected them based on their descriptions seeming appropriate. If you have feedback about them, please let us know.
Python
- Programming for Everybody: online book & Youtube lectures by Chuck Severance
- Beginner tutorial, OOP programming: Series of Youtube tutorials by Corey Shaffer
- Python Data Science Handbook: book by Jake VanderPlas
- Codeacademy Learn Python 3: Codecademy online course with a free trial
- Python Principles (learning basics via coding): Python Principles online course
- Programming in Python for Data Science: online course open lectures by Michael Gelbart, Hayley Boyce and Tiffany Timbers
R
- Data Science: A First Introduction: book by Tiffany Timbers, Trevor Campbell and Melissa Lee
- R for Data Science: book by Hadley Wickham, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel and Garett Grolemund
- R Programming: Coursera online course from Johns Hopkins U.
Statistics and Probability
- Fat Chance: Probability from the Ground Up: edX online course from Harvard U.
- Introduction to Probability and Data with R: Coursera online course from Duke U.
- Basic Statistics: Coursera online course from University of Amsterdam
Calculus
- (Highly recommended) Essence of calculus: YouTube series by Grant Sanderson
- Calculus One: Coursera online course from The Ohio State University
- Calculus: Single Variable, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3: Coursera online course from U. Pennsylvania
- Calculus 1, Differentiation and Integration: edX online course from MIT
Linear algebra
- (Highly recommended) Essence of linear algebra: YouTube series by Grant Sanderson
- MIT A 2020 Vision of Linear Algebra, Spring 2020: Youtube video by Gilbert Strang
- Immersive linear algebra: interactive e-book by J. Ström, K. Åström, and T. Akenine-Möller
- Linear Algebra Refresher Course with Python: Udacity online course
- Introduction to Linear Algebra for Applied Machine Learning with Python: Blog by Pablo Caceres
Scientific Communication
- Writing Resources: online course from UBC
- Writing in the Sciences: Coursera online course from Standford U. (free to audit)
General
- Data Analysis for the Life Sciences: book by Rafael A Irizarry and Michael I Love (has a suggested price but can be accessed for $0)
- A variety of free O’Reilly Ebooks on data science: e-book from O’Reilly
- Dataquest: online course by Dataquest
- Data Gymnasia: online course from Brown University