Data Science: Programming with Python

About

This course starts at the very basics and is explicitly intended for students who have no or only little programming experience.

Python has become the dominant programming language used in data science. Programming is the process of designing and building an executable computer programme for accomplishing a specific computational task. The course will introduce you to programming with Python, which is currently one of the most popular programming languages in (data) science. After familiarization with the basics (input and output, variables, data types, data structures, conditional branching, loops, functions, etc.) the course will address specific data science topics, such as statistical analyses with the pandas package and data visualization with matplotlib.

Every day, short lectures will be combined with practicals, where students can practice with example datasets that will vary over the course of the week. In the afternoon, students choose to work in small project groups on applying the lessons of the day to a real-life dataset or work on their own individual project and additional exercises. Students will get on-location guidance from the tutors of the course while they are working on their projects.

More details on the day-to-day programme can be found in a separate file. Broadly, the following topics are addressed:

Day 1: getting started, the programming environment, editing and running Python programmes, input and output, variables, arithmetic expressions, conditional branching, loops
Day 2: functions, the standard library, data structures
Day 3: basics of object-oriented programming, data frames, statistical analyses with the pandas package
Day 4: data visualization with matplotlib, matrix computations with numpy
Day 5: group presentations, best practices for software project management
Course credits of 1.5 EC are offered to students who attend meetings every day, actively participate in the exercises and present their (group or individual) project on the last day.

The course will use freely accessible literature that will be made available to course participants during the course. The literature serves both as a practical guide to course materials, and more in-depth reading that can be done during or after the course.

Participants are requested to bring their own laptop. Software will be available online.

Course leader

dr. Anastasia Giachanou

Target group

The course requires no specific previous knowledge, in particular no prior programming skills. You will need to bring your own laptop to do the exercises. Any operating system (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux) is fine, as long as new software can be installed on the machine. We assume that you have elemental computer skills such as browser usage, storing files, installing programmes, etc..

There are no restrictions on who can participate beyond the prerequisites; academics, researchers, and professional participants are all welcome to register for the course.

We also offer tailor-made M&S courses and in-house M&S training. If you want to look at the possibilities, please contact Dr. Laurence Frank at pe.dsai@uu.nl.

Course aim

After finishing the course successfully, you will be able to:

think computationally about data-related problems
design programmes for specific computational tasks
write Python programmes for specific computational tasks, including, e.g., asking and reading input from the user, loading data from files, preprocessing and analyzing data, performing calculations, simulating processes, visualizing data and results, storing data and results into files
validate Python programmes for correct functioning
document and describe Python programmes.
After this course the students will have learned basic programming for data science in Python and therefore will be able to follow the summer course Data Science: Machine learning with Python.

During the course, the students will get on-location expertise and advice regarding how to address their programming challenges and how to further develop their programming skills.

Fee info