Training overview

The goal of this introductory workshop is to teach novice programmers to write code in Python for data analysis. Python is a free, open source and cross-platform software that can do anything from creating stand along software and websites, to performing scientific computations and advanced text analysis. It is used in the academic realm for collecting, organizing, processing, and visualizing datasets. Python is commonly used in the academic realm for scientific computing, web scraping, data science and machine learning, as well as natural language processing. The primary philosophy of Python is to make a programming language that is easy for humans to read, making it an ideal "first language" to learn.

The emphasis of this workshop is to give attendees a strong foundation in the fundamentals of Python, including syntax (what you write when writing python programs), jargon (how you talk about programming with programmers) and fundamental concepts (what is actually happening when your computer runs code). Since Python is used in a wide variety of ways, we can't teach you how to write the exact program you need, but this training will provide the foundation you need to get started.

Learning objectives

This training series aims to enable students to:

• Determine whether Python is for you.

• Become familiar with Python syntax and jargon.

• Assign variables and use Python as a calculator.

Skills

• Analytical skills: the ability to construct and express logical arguments and to work in abstract or general terms to increase the clarity and efficiency of analysis;

• Collaborative skills: the ability to work in a team;

• Computational skills: the ability to adapt existing computational methods and tools to complete a target task;

• Problem solving skills: the ability to engage with unfamiliar problems and identify relevant solution strategies.