1.1 Two Courses, One Goal

Students will quickly notice that this course has two numbers. SOC 4650 is the undergraduate section, and SOC 5650 is the graduate section. This quickly leads to anxiety for some students, who worry they have signed up for the wrong class (occasionally this is not misplaced anxiety - make sure you are enrolled in the correct section!) or who worry that they are taking a class that is not appropriate for their skill level. This class is designed for students with little to no background in GIS and scientific computing more generally. For those students, the level is largely irrelevant - undergraduate and graduate students who have not been exposed to these ideas need to cover the same material.

Graduate students who take this class will have to do some additional work - the final project is more rigorous than the project that undergraduates will complete. Otherwise, the course is the same because what content students need is largely the same as well.