Developing Data Products

This is the final course before the capstone in the Data Science specialization from Johns Hopkins on Coursera. Overall this is one of the coolest courses in the specialization. It covers production of data products (as the name suggests), such as web-based data apps using Shiny and HTML-based presentations using Slidify, among other things. These two procedures are then used for the final project, in which the student creates his/her own Shiny-based app as well as a Slidify-produced presentation introducing the app.

This may not be the most directly useful course in the specialization for most students, but it is very interesting and more fun than most of the preceding courses. I spent a fair amount of time getting my Shiny app (a simple body mass index calculator and population distribution visualizer) to work the way I wanted, and I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. I can see a lot of use for these tools in education, and there are probably myriad applications in business as well.

Overall, four stars. One of my favorite courses in the specialization, even if I will probably rarely use what I learned.