RFC: Proposal to Replace Princeton's DSA with Georgia Tech's CS 1332 Series in Data Science Curriculum

[tuskydev]

Problem:

• Proposing the 4-course CS 1332 Data Structures and Algorithms course from Georgia Tech over the current 2-part Princeton's DSA in the Data Science Curriculum: https://www.edx.org/certificates/professional-certificate/gtx-data-structures-and-algorithms

Duration:

• 2024 April 28

Background:

• It includes a great visual tool to visualize all the data structures it covers: https://csvistool.com/
• The TA's for the Princeton courses have announced they will not keep supporting students who ask questions on the forums
• Georgia Tech's CS 1332 not only has active TA's in the edX forums but has a discord server where one can lean on for help from actual students at GT
• The instructor for all 4 courses, Mary H-B, has great 8-10min videos, and doesn't read off the slides (unlike Princeton)
• Princeton forces the student to use the school's proprietary libraries and download specific IDE's for their course; OSSU students have complained about this but the people I've heard state their opinions on this are few

Proposal:

• The 4 courses are equal to one semester total at Georgia Tech
• CS1332x I-IV on the edX platform:
  • CS 1332x I
  • CS 1332x II
  • CS 1332x III
  • CS 1332x IV

Alternatives:

1. Stick with the status quo
2. Replace the Princeton course with an alternative
3. Look for a Python course alternative; though hasn't been done in years (looking at previous RFC's)

Thoughts are highly appreciated, don't hold back! Thank you 🙏🏼

[waciumawanjohi]

The comment period has ended with support expressed by a few individuals, including a frequent contributor. @tuskydev Please open a PR to enact this change!

[tuskydev]

Will do! Thanks a lot @waciumawanjohi