How to access : Training and resources
A basic understanding of SQL and GitHub is very helpful for navigating the IDS. We recommend the following reading to prospective IDS users who have not heard of these before:
- an introduction to SQL (opens in a new tab)
- an introduction to GitHub (opens in a new tab)
- free introduction to GitHub course (opens in a new tab)
R and Python
Users will also need to have some coding abilities in R or Python. Plenty of free and commercial coding courses are available for both tools, including:
- W3 (opens in a new tab) - free tutorials for Python, R, SQL and other coding languages
- Quick-R (opens in a new tab) - an introduction to basic R facilities
- The Python Software Foundation (opens in a new tab) - an introduction to Python for beginners
- R for Data Science, (opens in a new tab) a free book on the more in-depth capabilities of R
- An introduction to statistical learning (opens in a new tab) provides free textbooks on statistical approaches in R and Python
- introductory courses for government analysts through the Data Science Campus (opens in a new tab)
- courses and tutorials through Codecademy (opens in a new tab)
Geospatial resources
- Beginner - Awareness of Geography and Statistics - ONS Geo team (opens in a new tab)
- Beginner - How To Make A Good Map - ONS Geo team (opens in a new tab)
- Intermediate - Practical Geography for Statistics - ONS Geo team (opens in a new tab)
- Intermediate - GIS in Python, (opens in a new tab) GIS in R (opens in a new tab)
Additional resources
- Google Cloud Fundamentals on Coursera (opens in a new tab) , for general Google Cloud Platform (GCP) awareness
- Getting Started with JupyterLab - JupyterLab docs (opens in a new tab)
- A beginner’s guide to BigQuery (opens in a new tab)
Further guidance on modelling techniques is available in the Government Analysis Function quality assurance for coding in analysis or research (QACAR) guidance (opens in a new tab)