Excel and Access
There are two ways for Binghamton University students to use excel and access for free.
- Go here and enter your binghamton email address to receive a free subscription to Microsoft 360, which includes both Excel and Access.
- Use BingView to remotely log in to a PODS computer that already has Excel and Access installed.
Some other good resources to use are:
SQL
SQL stands for "Structured Query Language" and is pronounced "sequel." SQL is a special-purpose programming language used for managing data in a relational database management system (RDBMS.) SQL is a widely used language standard and there are many implementations in use today. Her are some that you may find useful.
SQLite
SQLite is a light-weight, server-less, and configuration-less implementation of SQL.
Download MySQL from here. Choose the Operating System you are on, download the MSI installer, create an Oracle account (or login), accept the terms, and then select the full package. Also, make sure to skip manual installation for packages you don't have on your computer (for example, Python and Visual Studio). The username you select will become the root directory. Finally, make sure to remember your password and then you are good to go.
Here are some popular SQLite management tools:
- SQLite Administrator
- SQLite Manager (Firefox plug-in)
- SQLiteStudio
- SQL Expert
Some other good resources to use are:
- SQL Zoo/ (This one is really good)
- CodeCademy
- Learn SQL
- SQL: Table Transformation
- SQL: Analysing Business Metrics
- W3Schools
- DoFactory
- Franchise Cloud
- Lagunita Stanford
Python and Jupyter
Anaconda
Anaconda is a free distribution of Python that a large numbers of packages useful for Data Science and other fields.
It makes package management and deployment significantly easier.
https://www.anaconda.com/download/
We recommend installing the newest version (Python 3.7 at this time.)
If you need to use an earlier version of Python for some specific project you can always install it in a new environment.
Jupyter
Anaconda also installs Jupyter, the new version of iPython notebooks newly designed to support other Data Science friendly languages such as R and Julia. (Julia, Python, and R)
Jupyter notebooks are self-contained projects with data, code, graphs, and formatted text that make it easier to show your work to others.
Visit CodeCademy and go to "Learn Python" for more information.
R and RStudio
Installation
- Download Microsoft R Open: https://mran.revolutionanalytics.com/open/
- Run the installation with all the defaults
- This will also download and install MKL (Math Kernal Library) which makes the math go faster on multi-core machines.
- Download RStudio (Desktop Open Source Edition) here: https://www.rstudio.com/products/RStudio/
- Install RStudio with all the defaults
Tutorials
- Try R is a good introduction to R. Installation is not required.