microsoft/Data-Science-For-Beginners

10 Weeks, 20 Lessons, Data Science for All!

What it is

A free, 10-week, 20-lesson introductory course on data science, created by Microsoft's Azure Cloud Advocates team. It's designed for beginners with no assumed prior data science knowledge.

Who it's for

  • Students — you can work through the course on your own, or form a study group
  • Teachers — the project includes guidance resources for using the curriculum in a classroom
  • Absolute beginners — there's a special "examples" folder with simple, fully-commented code to ease you in

What's inside

Each lesson contains:

  • A pre-lesson quiz and a post-lesson quiz (40 total, 3 questions each)
  • A written lesson
  • Step-by-step project instructions for project-based lessons
  • Knowledge checks, a challenge, and supplemental reading
  • An assignment, plus solution code available in /solutions folders
  • Optional sketchnotes and supplemental videos

The curriculum path

The course moves through six modules:

  1. Introduction — what data science is, ethics, defining data, statistics & probability
  2. Working With Data — relational (SQL) and non-relational data, Python, data preparation
  3. Data Visualization — quantities, distributions, proportions, relationships, meaningful visuals
  4. Data Science Lifecycle — acquiring data, analyzing it, and communicating insights
  5. Data Science in the Cloud — using cloud tools and low-code options
  6. Data Science in the Wild — real-world project examples

Projects start small and grow more complex by the end of the 10 weeks.

Languages

The full course is translated into 50+ languages (Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Spanish, etc.). Translations are kept up-to-date automatically. If you want a smaller download, you can clone the repo without the translation folders.

Quizzes

The quizzes live in a separate quiz-app folder. You can run them locally or deploy them, and they're linked from within the lessons.

Community

There's an active Discord community for learners, and a "Learn with AI" series scheduled for September 2025 with tips on using GitHub Copilot for data science.

How to start

  1. Read the Installation Guide to set up your environment
  2. Read the Usage Guide to understand how the course flows
  3. Start with Lesson 1 and go sequentially
  4. Join the Discord for support

The README also points students toward Microsoft Learn resources and a Student Hub page for extra study material.

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