Introduction to Data Science – Lecture Material

Course website: http://datasciencecourse.net

This repository will contain the material used in the lectures. For Jupyter-based lectures, we will upload before class, so you can follow along in Jupyter. For slide-based lectures, we upload after class to avoid spoiling answers for in-class activities.

You can manually download the files for each lecture, but we recommend that you use git to clone and update this repository.

You can use GitHub Desktop to update this repository as new lectures are published, or you can use the following commands (recommended):

Initial Step: Cloning

When you clone a repository you set up a copy on your computer. Run:

git clone https://github.com/datascience-course/2026-datascience-lectures

This will create a folder 2026-datascience-lectures on your computer, with the individual labs in subdirectories.

Playing Along in Class & Updating

When you make changes to Jupyter notebooks, including simply running them, the Jupyter notebook itself changes. This creates a discrepancy between the version hosted on Github and the one your personal machine. If you try to update later (see below), git will warn you about the collisions. To avoid this, its best to save your version in its own git branch.

Note, these instructions assume you are in the directory named 2026-datascience-lectures.

First, create a branch for in class. You can name it whatever you want, but we will name it in-class in this example.

git checkout -b in-class

The -b tells git to create a new branch.

Then, whenever you want to alter the lecture notebooks, make sure you are on that branch, by checking out without newly creating:

git checkout in-class

To save your classwork, commit the changes in the branch:

git add [notebookname]
git commit -m "[message]"

Where you fill in your own notebook name and message.

Updating

As we release new lectures or update lectures, you'll have to update your repository. Once again, you need to be in the 2026-datascience-lectures directory.

First, make sure you are on the main branch:

git checkout main

Then, you can pull the newest version from the Github repository:

git pull

That's it – you'll have the latest version of the lectures. If you're using a different branch to run the lectures, don't forget to checkout your in-class branch!