Teaching researchers fundamental concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with domain-specific data, as well as data analysis and data management best practices

Data Carpentry is a sibling initiative inspired by the Software Carpentry, designed to teach researchers fundamental concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with data. Both initiatives maintain close ties which helps to build a community of practice among the instructors and expand the base of teaching materials. As in Software Carpentry, teaching is delivered through intensive two-day workshops.

Data Carpentry designs the workshops to fit into the needs of particular domains, but covers core topics such as:

  • caveats of working with spreadsheets,
  • data manipulation and visualisation with R or Python,
  • introduction to SQL, and
  • introduction to Open Refine.

We support the Data Carpentry mission through our work for the Software Sustainability Institute, which is the official Data Carpentry representative in the UK.