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Python Programming- School of Global Policy and Strategy

Jan 29-Feb 12, 2016

06:30 pm -9:20 pm

Instructors: Guilherme Castelao (SIO), Kay Lyu (GPS)

Helpers: Reid Otsuji, Kay Lyu, Anushka Rostogi

General Information

This is the website for the School of Global Policy and Strategy short course in Python programming. This course will introduce you the Python programming language and how to use Python to work with data. In order to earn a certificate of proficiency, you must attend all of the class meetings for the course, do the short coding assignments, and pass the short, in-class quiz at the end of the course. Courses begin on Monday, January 4th. This is the first day of instruction, winter quarter.

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.

Where: Robinson Auditorium, 9500 Gilman Drive, #0519, La Jolla, CA. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a few specific software packages installed (listed below).

Contact: Please mail rotsuji@ucsd.edu for more information.

Assessment: A certificate of proficiency will be given to students who:

  • Attends all classes
  • Passes all in-course quizzes
  • Satisfactorily completes the weekly assignments

Need help?: Email rotsuji@ucsd.edu

Schedule

schedule
Date Class Topics
Jan. 29 Lecture Jupyter, Variables, Data Types, Functions, Built-ins Libraries, Reading Data into Data Frames
Feb. 5 Lecture Pandas & Plotting, Lists, Loops, Functions, Conditionals
Quiz & Assignment 1 Posted in TritonEd
Feb. 12 Lecture Review - List, Loops, Functions, Conditionals - Lecture notebook
Quiz & Assignment 2 Posted in TritonEd

Etherpad: http://pad.software-carpentry.org/gps-py2018.
We will use this Etherpad for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.

Syllabus

Programming in Python

  • Using libraries
  • Working with arrays
  • Reading and plotting data
  • Creating and using functions
  • Loops and conditionals
  • Defensive programming
  • Using Python from the command line
  • Reference...

Setup

To participate in this course, you will need access to the software described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

Text Editor

When you're writing code, it's nice to have a text editor that is optimized for writing code, with features like automatic color-coding of key words. The default text editor on Mac OS X and Linux is usually set to Vim, which is not famous for being intuitive. if you accidentally find yourself stuck in it, try typing the escape key, followed by :q! (colon, lower-case 'q', exclamation mark), then hitting Return to return to the shell.

Windows

nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. To install it, download the Software Carpentry Windows installer and double click on the file to run it. This installer requires an active internet connection.

Others editors that you can use are Notepad++ or Sublime Text. Be aware that you must add its installation directory to your system path. Please ask your instructor to help you do this.

Mac OS X

nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. It should be pre-installed.

Others editors that you can use are Text Wrangler or Sublime Text.

Linux

nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. It should be pre-installed.

Others editors that you can use are Gedit, Kate or Sublime Text.

Python

Python is a popular language for scientific computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. Installing all of its scientific packages individually can be a bit difficult, so we recommend Anaconda, an all-in-one installer.

Regardless of how you choose to install it, please make sure you install Python version 3.x (e.g., 3.4 is fine).

We will teach Python using the IPython notebook, a programming environment that runs in a web browser. 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).

Windows

  1. Open http://continuum.io/downloads with your web browser.
  2. Download the Python 3 installer for Windows.
  3. Install Python 3 using all of the defaults for installation except make sure to check Make Anaconda the default Python.

Mac OS X

  1. Open http://continuum.io/downloads with your web browser.
  2. Download the Python 3 installer for OS X.
  3. Install Python 3 using all of the defaults for installation.

Linux

  1. Open http://continuum.io/downloads with your web browser.
  2. Download the Python 3 installer for Linux.
  3. Install Python 3 using all of the defaults for installation. (Installation requires using the shell. If you aren't comfortable doing the installation yourself stop here and request help at the workshop.)
  4. Open a terminal window.
  5. Type 
    bash Anaconda-
    and then press tab. The name of the file you just downloaded should appear.
  6. Press enter. You will follow the text-only prompts. When there is a colon at the bottom of the screen press the down arrow to move down through the text. Type yes and press enter to approve the license. Press enter to approve the default location for the files. Type yes and press enter to prepend Anaconda to your PATH (this makes the Anaconda distribution the default Python).

Once you are done installing the software listed above, please go to this page, which has instructions on how to test that everything was installed correctly.

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