The Department of Research Informatics and Publishing enhances the technology-driven teaching and research capacity of the Penn State community. We partner with students, faculty, and staff to consult, provide training, and support projects in the areas of research data management, digital humanities, mapping, statistical analysis, data analytics and visualization, and open publishing. Our services are based on the tenets of openness, innovation and technology, collaboration, and supporting the entire research workflow.

• The general workflow for data analytics and visualization is to gather data sources; consolidate data, pre-process data including filtering, aggregation, transformation, and other data tasks; model data, including creating models, estimating and validating models; analyze results, including description, prediction, prescriptions, and impact evaluation; visualize the result with user interaction.
• What are the types of Data Analytics applications?
  • Business Intelligence (BI) and reporting: it provides business executives and other corporate workers with actionable information about key performance indicators, business operations, customers, and more. – SearchDataManagement
  • Advanced Data Analytics: it includes data mining, which involves sorting through large data sets to identify trends, patterns, and relationships; predictive analytics, which seeks to predict customer behavior, equipment failures, and other future events; and machine learning, and artificial intelligence technique that uses automated algorithms to churn through data sets more quickly than data scientists can do via conventional analytical modeling. Big data analytics applies data mining, predictive analytics, and machine learning tools to sets of big data that often contain unstructured and semi-structured data. Text mining provides a means of analyzing documents, emails, and other text-based content.  – SearchDataManagement

Consultation service and learning resources

Use the following links to download the software you need for your data and analytics projects. We recommend using the official documentations as learning resources, they are very well designed and allow you to learn in a systematic way. If you would like to discuss your research projects with us, please contact us for a one-to-one consultation by appointment. 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://weblabs.psu.edu/. 

Business Analytics

• Download links (MS applications are free to PSU users as part of Office 365 group license, log in for free download)
  • MS SQL SERVER Express (PC): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-downloads
  • MS POWER BI (PC or online): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=58494
  • 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 the online platforms
  • 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/
• Learning Resources
  • MS Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/azure-fundamentals/
  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP): https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/tutorials

Besides the documentation from the official websites, we recommend other great learning resources, such as https://lynda.psu.edu/, https://www.cloud.psu.edu/, and Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) that offer 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.

Spring 2021 workshops

Penn State University Libraries will continue to offer Data Analytics and Visualization sessions this semester via Zoom. It highlights part of the Research Data Services offered by the Libraries’ Research Informatics and Publishing department. 

These sessions are aimed at introducing the resources and expertise available at the University Libraries in Data Analytics and Visualization and offering an opportunity for hands-on experience using the available software tools at the university libraries.

The sessions are free and open to all Penn State students, staff, and faculty. Advanced registration is recommended.

The general scope and purpose for these sessions are to overview the subject of data analytics, also to explore some commonly used software tools by demonstrating data analysis and visualization process based on some public sample datasets. Information about online resources, available university libraries’ resources (computers and software programs), and one-on-one consultation service from Research Data Services at Research Informatics and Publishing will be provided.

Contact: Xuying Xin, Data Analyst (Certified Tableau Desktop Specialist and MS Power BI), xzx1@psu.edu

Spring 2020 workshops:

Data Visualization with Tableau

Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020, 2:00-3:30 p.m., W312A Pattee Library.

Introduction to Database - MS Access & Excel

Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020, 2:00-3:30p.m., W312A Pattee Library

Business Analytics with MS SQL Server & Business Intelligence (BI)/SSIS, SSAS, SSRS

Thursday, Mar. 26, 2020, 2:00-3:30p.m., W312A Pattee Library

Data Visualization with Power BI Desktop

Thursday, Apr. 23, 2020, 2:00-3:30p.m., W312A Pattee Library