Learning Outcome
How to communicate data-driven findings
Individual Course
Data Science: Visualization
Course Length
8 weeks
1-2 hours a week
Featuring faculty from:
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Enroll as Individual
Certificate Price:
$ 219
Enroll as Individual
Certificate Price:
$ 219
In this online course taught by Harvard Professor Rafael Irizarry, learn basic data visualization principles and how to apply them using ggplot2.
As part of our Professional Certificate Program in Data Science, this course covers the basics of data visualization and exploratory data analysis. We will use three motivating examples and ggplot2, a data visualization package for the statistical programming language R. We will start with simple datasets and then graduate to case studies about world health, economics, and infectious disease trends in the United States.
We'll also be looking at how mistakes, biases, systematic errors, and other unexpected problems often lead to data that should be handled with care. The fact that it can be difficult or impossible to notice a mistake within a dataset makes data visualization particularly important.
The growing availability of informative datasets and software tools has led to increased reliance on data visualizations across many areas. Data visualization provides a powerful way to communicate data-driven findings, motivate analyses, and detect flaws. This course will give you the skills you need to leverage data to reveal valuable insights and advance your career.
Self-Guided
EDX
Learning Outcome
How to use ggplot2 to create custom plots
Learning Outcome
The weaknesses of several widely-used plots and why you should avoid them
- Learn from Harvard faculty
- Do it on your own time
- Get a certificate, add it to your resume
- Be part of the Harvard Community
Faculty
Your Instructor
Rafael Irizarry
Professor of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Rafael Irizarry is a Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Professor of Biostatistics and Computational Biology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. For the past 15 years, Dr. Irizarry’s research has focused on the analysis of genomics data. During this time, he has also taught several classes, all related to applied statistics. Dr. Irizarry is one of the founders of the Bioconductor Project, an open source and open development software project for the analysis of genomic data. His publications related to these topics have been highly cited and his software implementations widely downloaded.
Read full bio.
Complete your journey with this Professional Certificate Series
These courses can be bundled together to receive a professional certificate at a discounted price.
Learn More- 9 Courses
- 1 Year & 5 Months
- Earn Your Certificate
Data Science: Capstone
15-20 hours a week • Starting Oct 15, 2025
Data Science: Inference and Modeling
1-2 hours per week • Starting Oct 15, 2025
Data Science: Probability
1-2 hours a week • Starting Oct 15, 2025
Data Science: Machine Learning
2-4 hours a week • Starting Oct 15, 2025
Data Science: Wrangling
1-2 hours a week • Starting Oct 15, 2025
Data Science: Linear Regression
1-2 hours a week • Starting Oct 15, 2025
Data Science: R Basics
1-2 hours a week • Starting Oct 15, 2025
Data Science: Productivity Tools
1-2 hours a week • Starting Oct 15, 2025
Ways to take this course
Audit or Pursue a Verified Certificate
A Verified Certificate costs $219 and provides unlimited access to full course materials, activities, tests, and forums. At the end of the course, learners who earn a passing grade can receive a certificate.
Alternatively, learners can Audit the course for free and have access to select course material, activities, tests, and forums. Please note that this track does not offer a certificate for learners who earn a passing grade.
Stay tuned for more
Don’t miss a thing. Subscribe to our newsletter and get updates on exclusive content for Harvard Online learners.