Date: Jan 8 - Mar 15, 2024
Time: 3:30 pm - 4:50 pm
Venue: School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) - Skills Courses
Instructors: TBD
TA: Henry Mo
Zoom DJ: TBD
This is the website for the School of Global Policy and Strategy Skills Courses. In order to earn a certificate of proficiency, you must attend all of the class meetings for the course, do the short assignments, and pass the quizzes.
Who: The course is aimed at GPS graduate students. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a few specific software packages installed (listed below).
Contact: Please email research-it@ucsd.edu for more information.
Assessment: A certificate of proficiency will be given to students who:
Data:
Need help?:
Credits: The course materials are adapted from the Carpentries lessons. Many thanks to the authors of those lessons.
Dates | Course | Syllabus |
---|---|---|
Jan 8th - Feb 7th | Python Skills Course | Session 1: Running and Quitting, Variables and Assignment, and Data Types and Type Conversion; Session 2: Built-in Functions, Help, and Libraries; Session 3: Reading Tabular Data into DataFrames and Pandas Dataframes; Session 4: Plotting and Lists; Session 5: For Loops, Conditionals, and Looping Over Data Sets; Session 6: Writing Functions and Variable Scope; Session 7: Errors & Exceptions and Debugging; Session 8: Command-line Programs |
Feb 12th - Mar 13th | Data Management Skills Course | Session 1: Intro to the Unix Shell; Session 2: Version Control with Git (part 1); Session 3: Version Control with Git (part 2); Session 4: Version Control with Git (part 3); Session 5: Intro to SQL (part 1); Session 6: Intro to SQL (part 2); Session 7: Databases and SQL (part 1); Session 8: Databases and SQL (part 2) |
For this workshop we will be referencing "Plotting and Programming in Python, Programming with Python, The UNIX Shell, Version Control with Git , Library Carpentry: SQL, and Databases and SQL Carpentries curricula.
We will use HackMD for collaborative notes, sharing URLs and bits of code.
To participate in this workshop, you will need access to the software described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.
We will teach Python using the Jupyter Notebook, a programming environment that runs in a web browser (Jupyter Notebook will be installed by Anaconda). For this to work you will need a reasonably up-to-date browser. The current versions of the Chrome, Safari and Firefox browsers are all supported (some older browsers, including Internet Explorer version 9 and below, are not).
Video Tutorial: SWC Install Python on Windows
Video Tutorial: SWC Install Python on Mac
bash Anaconda3-and then press Tab to autocomplete the full file name. The name of file you just downloaded should appear.
yes
and press enter to approve the license.
Press Enter (or Return)
to approve the default location
for the files.
Type yes
and press
Enter (or Return)
to prepend Anaconda to your PATH
(this makes the Anaconda distribution the default Python).
Bash is a commonly-used shell that gives you the power to do tasks more quickly.
Git 2.27.0 Setup
Adjusting your PATH environment
Choosing the SSH executable
Choosing HTTPS transport backend
This should mean that people stuck behind corporate firewalls that do MITM attacks with their own root CA are still able to access remote git repos.
Configuring the line ending conversions
Configuring the terminal emulator to use with Git Bash
Configuring extra options
Configuring experimental options
Installing
Completing the Git Setup Wizard
as of 2020-06-02, the Window will say "click Finish", but the button is labelled as "Next"
cmd
and press Enter)setx HOME "%USERPROFILE%"
SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.
exit
then pressing EnterThis will provide you with both Git and Bash in the Git Bash program.
Video Tutorial: Windows Installation
The default shell in some versions of macOS is Bash, and Bash is available in all versions, so no need to install anything. You access Bash from the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities
). See the Git installation video tutorial for an example on how to open the Terminal. You may want to keep Terminal in your dock for this workshop.
To see if your default shell is Bash type echo $SHELL
in Terminal and press the Return key. If the message
printed does not end with '/bash' then your default is something
else and you can run Bash by typing bash
If you want to change your default shell, see this Apple Support article and follow the instructions on "How to change your default shell".
Video Tutorial MacOS InstallationThe default shell is usually Bash and there is usually no need to install anything.
To see if your default shell is Bash type echo $SHELL
in
a terminal and press the Enter key. If the message printed
does not end with '/bash' then your default is something else and you
can run Bash by typing bash
.
Git is a version control system that lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com. You will need a supported web browser.
You will need an account at github.com for parts of the Git lesson. Basic GitHub accounts are free. We encourage you to create a GitHub account if you don't have one already. Please consider what personal information you'd like to reveal. For example, you may want to review these instructions for keeping your email address private provided at GitHub.
Git should be installed on your computer as part of your Bash install (see the Shell installation instructions).
For macOS, install Git for Mac
by downloading and running the most recent "mavericks" installer from
this list.
Because this installer is not signed by the developer, you may have to
right click (control click) on the .pkg file, click Open, and click
Open on the pop up window.
After installing Git, there will not be anything in your /Applications
folder,
as Git is a command line program.
For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.8) use the
most recent available installer labelled "snow-leopard"
available here.
Video Tutorial: SWC Install Shell, Git, and Nano on Mac
If Git is not already available on your machine you can try to
install it via your distro's package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu run
sudo apt-get install git
and for Fedora run
sudo dnf install git
.
SQL is a specialized programming language used with databases. We use a simple database manager called SQLite in our lessons.
The Software Carpentry Windows Installer installs SQLite for Windows. If you used the installer to configure nano, you don't need to run it again.
SQLite comes pre-installed on Mac OS X.
SQLite comes pre-installed on Linux.