Frequently Asked Questions for Fall 2021 Data 100

Data 100 will be taught in hybrid mode for the fall 2021 semester

Most lectures will be pre-recorded and available on the course website before the scheduled lecture time.
For a few live lectures, we will provide a Zoom link in advance on Piazza, and recordings will be kept for later asynchronous watching. The first live lecture will be in October at the earliest.
There will be both in-person and online options for discussions, labs and office hours.
The midterm exam will be offered online, but DSP students and those with specific needs who require an in-person exam will be offered that option. We will provide a form to coordinate with those who need to take the exam in-person. To ensure fairness, the conditions of the exam will be as identical as possible in both settings.
The above means that time conflicts should not be an issue for anyone.

Q. What are the official prerequisites for this course?

A. The official list of prerequisites is:

Data 8.
CS 61A or CS88 or Engineering 7. We strongly recommend either CS 61A or CS 88.
EE 16A or Math 54 or Stat 89A. This may be satisfied concurrently with Data 100, but we strongly recommend that you finish a linear algebra course before taking Data 100.

Q. Will the official prerequisites be enforced?

A. The official prerequisites will are being strictly enforced by CDSS. Decisions on any requests for exceptions to this policy are being made by the CDSS advisors team and you must communicate directly with them - do not email instructors about this as we are not making these decisions at all.

Q. I am a graduate student but the system won’t let me enroll in Data 100 due to missing prerequsites, what can I do?

A. Graduate students should use the C200 class code, not C100: C200 has a proper graduate code so you don’t have undergraduate prerequisite issues. There will be some differences in grading and homework, but the main content is the same.

Q. I am waitlisted, what should I do?

A. Currently (Aug 23, 2021) the waitlist is relatively short compared to the overall class size, so we do not expect any issues allowing waitlisted students once the usual early-semester shuffle takes place.

We recommend that you sign up for the class Piazza and follow the class assuming you’ll have a slot soon. All lectures and class materials are openly available on the class website and all discussions happen on Piazza. We’ll be monitoring the waitlist and will do our best to ensure all waitlisted students can enroll.

There is no material on bCourses that you need or will miss, and if/when you get formally enrolled, you’ll be automatically added to bCourses for grade management (the only thing we keep there, to sync with Gradescope). In the meantime, you can join Gradescope using this code: BPRBWV.

Q. I have a Concurrent Enrollment Request that hasn’t been approved yet, what should I do?

A. By campus policy, we must first process the waitlist in its entirety before we can admit you. We will do all we can to ensure all waitlisted students are promptly admitted, so that you can also enroll in the course, though we can not provide 100% guarantee that will be the case. But given we think it is likely we’ll be able to admit you, we strongly suggest you start working on the course, following lectures and turning in assignments, from the start. This will prevent you from falling behind and will give you the best chance of success in the class.

Q. I am a campus student and would like to audit the course, what can I do?

A. Most class materials are available online to all campus students, and you can access the lecture videos, slides, etc. without limit, as well as use the online Data 100 DataHub (our JupyterHub instance for this class).

Note however that the class Piazza, our only other class resource, is reserved for enrolled students and faculty auditors, as homework details and solutions are discussed in that environment.

Q. I Have a time conflict for the final, what can I do?

A. The course will have a final group project in lieu of a final exam, so there should be no issues for anyone on this front.

Q. What is the proctoring policy given the online nature of the course?

A. We will offer each exam on two timezones, to be taken synchronously. The online exam will be proctored with a minimally-invasive Zoom setup that has been used successfully on campus for other courses and that does not require you to install any custom proctoring spyware on your computer. The in-person exam locations (DSP or not will have regular proctoring).

Q. What is the alternate exam policy?

A. Each exam will be offered in two timeslots, roughly corresponding to the morning and evening in Pacific Time, to accommodate for timezone differences. Everyone must be able to make one of these two timeslots; we will not be offering additional alternates to accommodate for class conflicts.

Q. When will the full schedule of labs and discussions be announced?

A. We are still developing the schedule and logistics; we will post a complete version by the first day of class.

Q. Where can I find links to the class textbook and other relevant resources?

A. The class resources page has these links, don’t hesitate to make suggestions by filing an issue on the class repository (or even better, propose a new pull request with your additions!) You can join Piazza using this signup Link, or add the course on Gradescope using this code: BPRBWV.

Q. Where is the Class Piazza?

A. Here. If your question isn’t answered here, please try Piazza next before emailing the instructors. Here is the signup Link

Q. I can’t find any information on bCourses, why?

A. We are not using bCourses for anything other than synchronizing access to Gradescope, so as long as you are enrolled in the class, you don’t need anything. All class materials are available online through the website, communications happen on Piazza, and computational work is done on the DataHub.

Q. I have added the course later in the semester. Can I catch up? Can I be excused for all late work

A. The answer to the first question is impossible to give in general, as it depends both on how late you add the course, and what your own background is. But as a general rule, the course moves quite quickly and covers new ground from the start. We estimate most students will probably struggle to catch up effectively if they join any later than the first few days of the semester, unless they have a particularly strong background already in the initial topics (probability, SQL, Python and Pandas).

As for the second part of this question - in fairness to our desire to apply our policies as uniformly and universally as possible, we do not make separate considerations for late work based on the date you joined the course. We offer fairly generous drop/late assignment policies which you can take advantage of and apply them to early work, but there are no extra allowances based on your start date.

To get a section (discussion and lab) assignment, please contact Akshara Majjiga.

Q. I didn’t turn in a Lab/HW/etc in time, can I have an extension?

A. We have a generous drop policy for assignments, and therefore we do not provide extensions, unless there is a major and documented set of exceptional circumstances (death in the family, outage in the hub that prevents students from working, natural disaster, …). If the problem is class-wide we’ll make announcements on Piazza, else you can request the extension by contacting Samantha Hing.

Q. I would like to make a class-wide announcement about my project/group/initiative/etc.

A. We only allow posts made on Piazza and you must make it yourself, we do not make posts on your behalf. These are our guidelines for Piazza posts from student groups - they must be text-only posts (no videos) where the announcement:

Has to do with teaching or tutoring in a non-commercial setting, or
is directly related to the material in the course, or
is seeking to recruit students to help with the public good in a non-financial way (no solicitations for donations!), and in a context explicitly connected to their work in the course.

Q. Who do I contact if I have further questions, how do I email the instruction team?

A. Please e-mail data100.instructors@berkeley.edu, and one of the instructors will get back to you. Note that this address is monitored by the team of the two lead instructors (Alvin Wan and Fernando Pérez) as well as several lead GSIs, to ensure more timely responses. You can contact Alvin and Fernando directly for matters that require strict privacy and their direct attention.

We’re excited to have you in the class this fall!

Alvin, Fernando, and the rest of your Fall 2021 instructional team.