  We describe an introductory data science course, entitled Introduction to
Data Science, offered at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The
course introduced general programming concepts by using the Python programming
language with an emphasis on data preparation, processing, and presentation.
The course had no prerequisites, and students were not expected to have any
programming experience. This introductory course was designed to cover a wide
range of topics, from the nature of data, to storage, to visualization, to
probability and statistical analysis, to cloud and high performance computing,
without becoming overly focused on any one subject. We conclude this article
with a discussion of lessons learned and our plans to develop new data science
courses.
