260072 VU Data Science for Physicists (2024S)

The course focuses on the application of Data Science methods in Physics, that is the combination of interdisciplinary activities (such as scientific, statistical and computational tools) required to elaborate data-centered analysis on relevant physical quantities. Data Science is a topic of increasing interest in the scientific community, due to the growing power of modern computational machines and the associated creation of large databases: The valuable information stored in such large databases can be extracted by Data Science methods, i.e., by combining statistics with advanced computational methods, including machine learning.

This course aims to provide students with an Introduction to the basic theoretical concepts and practical skills oriented towards Data Science in Physics. Specifically, the lectures cover the following topics: (i) collection and manipulation of data via computational tools (mostly in python environments), (ii) effective visualization of relevant information extracted from data, (iii) scientific analysis and physical interpretation of data, (iv) advanced computational techniques (mostly traditional methods, while machine learning techniques will be discussed in the final couple of lectures).

The course is structured in theoretical lectures (on Thursdays), followed by practical lectures (on Tuesdays).