About

This is the initial version of the blog for the course Coding & Data Visualization of Goethe’s Business School, first taught in the winter semester of 2024/25. The course offers a modern introduction to programming and data visualization using the R programming language, embracing generative AI tools. It is designed for business and economics students with either no or little programming experience.

The blog contains most of the material used in the course in a web format with interactive elements and audiovisual components. Additional exercises and content details are given during the course.

The course reflects my experiences from my personal involvement in the R community as a package developer, my data-driven research activities using R among other programming languages, and my previous teaching of econometric topics using R in my economics courses. Besides technical competencies, I hope to convey my appreciation for the creative aspects of programming and data visualization. These creative aspects are by no means limited to R; nonetheless, R is a great starting point for exploring them, in particular, for the application domains of business and economics.

I am indebted to Sanna Stephan for sharing with me the data misrepresentation cases she presents in her data analytics course. I would like to thank Uwe Walz for his influential contributions to the course design and Amanguli Yasheng and Anja Weigt for the pivotal help in the course organization. The discussions I had with Christos Emmanouilidis shaped my vision of the role of generative AI tools in the future of programming.