Jonathan Barlow is Associate Director of the Data Science Program and an Assistant Teaching Professor. Previously, Barlow was an associate director at NSPARC, a research center at Mississippi State University. Before joining Mississippi State in 2012, he worked for 15 years in the private sector. With a background in industry and university research, Barlow has more than 25 years of experience in software development, data modeling, data-intensive applications, and data analysis. Barlow received his Ph.D. from Saint Louis University. His data science research interests involve natural language processing and the ethics of artificial intelligence.

Barlow currently teaches several courses within the Data Science program including:

• DSCI 2013 Data Science Literacy
• DSCI 2012 Data Wrangling Lab
• DSCI 3013 Data Acquisition
• DSCI 8013 Data Science Pedagogy 1
• DSCI 8023 Data Science Pedagogy 2

He is passionate about connecting students with resources that allow for exploring the use of data to solve real-world problems in areas as diverse as sports, financial markets, the environment, sociology, and economics.

Parisi, D., Barlow, J., & Warkentin, M. (2023). Editorial: Where the data meets the road in the Industry 4.0 economy. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 24(3), 601-609.

Luczak, A., Jones, J. A., Burch, R., Barlow, J., Nelsen, P., Grice, S. M., . . . & Morgan, C. (2022). Advancing tangible augmented game objects for use in a golf swing, self-service training environment: Report of Work-in-Progress with a Multidisciplinary Emphasis. In 2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW) (pp. 136-140).

Luczak, A., Nelsen, P., Ball, J., Burch, R., Barlow, J., Duclos, M., Grice, S., & Taquino, M. (2022). A Survey of Technical Challenges in Computer Vision via Machine and Deep Learning for Human Pose Estimation. IISE 2022 Conference Proceedings.

Luczak, T., Burch, R., Nelsen, P., Freeman, C., Chander, H., Ball, J., Jones, J. A., Barlow, J., Saucier, D., Duclos, M., Grice, S., & Taquino, M. (2022). Athlete Engineering BaseLine Ecosystem: Innovative Technologies to Enhance Human Performance. TechConnect Conference Proceedings.

Barlow, J. "Generative AI in Context: An Overview" Prepared for the Mississippi State University Faculty Meeting to Discuss ChatGPT at Mississippi State University (April 21, 2023)

Barlow, J. “Data Science Overview” as guest lecturer to GE 1911 Introduction to Engineering course. (September 26, 2022)

Barlow, J. “Data Science Pedagogy Certificate” at Mississippi Community College President’s Council Meeting. (June 28, 2022)

Barlow, J. “Data Science at Mississippi State University” at NSF EPSCoR Workshop: Artificial Intelligence (AI) with No-Boundary Thinking (NBT) to Foster Collaborations in Research, Education and Training. (April 4, 2022)

Free Textbooks:

• Introduction to Probability for Data Science by Stanley Chan
• An Introduction to Statistical Learning by Gareth James, Daniela Witten, Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibsharani, and Jonathan Taylor
• An Introduction to Graph Theory by Darij Grinberg
• The Little Book of Machine Learning by François Fleuret

Free Online Courses

• MIT 18.06SC Linear Algebra with Professor Gilbert Strang

Data Catalogs

• Microsoft: Planetary Computer Data Catalog

Inspiration for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

• How to Start Google by Paul Graham

Becoming a Better Programmer

It's often very helpful to look at the work of professionals, especially those who create code in an elegant and efficient style. In addition, people who create programming languages usually create style guides to express their preference for what clean code looks like. Finally, there are some skills you'll need to hone over time as a professional. Here are some fun places to start:

• How to Write a Spelling Corrector by Peter Norvig
• Python Style Guide by Guido van Rossum
• The Missing Semester of Your CS Education from MIT