Open data: How to Use

Objectives

The main objective of the course is to offer a practical introduction to the automated collection and organisation of open data, while exploring some theoretical and ethical questions about open access.

The theoretical component will have as objectives:

  1. Introducing students to the issue of open data, in particular with regard to government data and science;
  2. Present and discuss the limits of open data and its ethical implications.
  3. Present the principles of open data distribution.
  4. The practical component will have as its objectives:
  5. Introduce students to the R programming language, an open access software widely used for automated data collection,
  6. management and analysis.
  7. Develop data management, manipulation and transformation capacity with R.
  8. Develop the ability to automatically extract data from digital sources with R.

General characterization

Code

02104625

Credits

10.0

Responsible teacher

Available soon

Hours

Weekly - 4

Total - 280

Teaching language

Portuguese

Prerequisites

Available soon

Bibliography

Kitchin, Rob (2014) The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and their consequences, SAGE Publications: Los Angeles.
Grolemund, Garret (2014) Hands-On Programming with R, O'Reilly Media: Cambridge.
Chang, Winston (2013) R Graphics Cookbook, O'Reilly Media: Cambridge.

Teaching method

This course will combine theoretical (30%) and practical (70%) lessons, the latter being held so that each student has access to a computer.

Evaluation method

Método de Avaliação - Final report (60%), Weekly exercises (40%)

Subject matter

1.    Open data and contemporary society:
1.1. Definition and introduction to open data;
1.2. Open government data;
1.3. Open data and science.
2.    Introduction to programming with R:
2.1.Object-oriented language;
2.2. Basic operations.
3. Data management with R:
3.1. Database management;
3.2. Data transformation;
3.3  Graphical data analysis.
4.    Automated data extraction:
4.1. Extraction from digital sources;
4.2. Extraction from website;
4.3. Extraction of social networks.
5. Open access data availability.

Programs

Programs where the course is taught: