A service network to support learning and research with data analytics and visualization

We are working with the Cloud Service Team at Penn State and the Power BI CoP launched by the Office of Planning, Assessment and Institutional Research (OPAIR) and the World Campus Outreach Analytics and Reporting team (OAR) to support learning and research for data analytics and visualization tools, such as Power BI, Tableau, Azure, AWS, and GCP. If you would like to discuss your data visualization projects with us, please feel free to make an appointment for one-to-one consultation by using Microsoft Bookings or LibCal. Customized workshops are also provided. In addition, we launched an Advanced Analytics and Visualization Digital Lab in Jan 2019 to provide computers with specialized software programs, such as Power BI, Tableau, R, Python, SAS, SPSS, STATA, ArcGIS. Currently, the computers and software are available to faculty and students via https://connect.labs.psu.edu/. Please feel free to use the following links to download the software tools you need for your data and analytics projects.

Business Analytics

Download links (MS applications are free to PSU users as part of the Office 365 group license, log in for free download)

• MS POWER BI (PC or online): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=58494

• MS SQL SERVER Express (PC): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-downloads

• MS Access (PC): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products?tab=1&rtc=1

• Tableau Public (Mac or PC): https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/download;

• Tableau offers a free one-year Tableau Desktop license for teachers and students

  • Tableau for students: https://www.tableau.com/academic/students

  • Tableau for teaching: https://www.tableau.com/academic/teaching

Learning resources

• MS Power BI: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guided-learning/; https://catalog.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/29282447

• Tableau Public: https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/resources; https://www.tableau.com/learn/training/20194

• MS Access: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/access-video-training-a5ffb1ef-4cc4-4d79-a862-e2dda6ef38e6

• MS SQL Server: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/tutorials-for-sql-server-2016?view=sql-server-ver15

• MS Excel: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/excel-for-windows-training-9bc05390-e94c-46af-a5b3-d7c22f6990bb

Big Data Analytics & Machine Learning

Access to the Cloud Platforms with AI/Machine Learning tools for Nature Language Processing (NLP), Auto Machine Learning, Bot Services, etc. 

• MS Azure (Get started with 12 months of free services): https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/

• Google Cloud Platform/GCP (Start running workloads on GCP for free): https://cloud.google.com/free/

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): https://aws.amazon.com/ 

Learning Resources

• Penn State Cloud Services: https://www.cloud.psu.edu/    

• MS Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/azure-fundamentals/

• Google Cloud Platform (GCP): https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/tutorials

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): https://aws.amazon.com/what-is-aws/?nc2=h_ql_le_int 

We recommend the official learning resource for these software tools because they are very well designed and allow you to learn in a systematic way. Additional great learning resources include LinkedIn Learning that is free to Penn State users https://linkedinlearning.psu.edu/, Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) that offers workshops, software programs, and High-Performance Computing (HPC) platforms or join PSU Data Analytics degree programs. Penn State University Libraries, Cloud Services team, and ICDS provide research consultations for using different data and analytics tools.