Introduction to Python

February 26th-28th, 9:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time each day

Description: Python can be used in many humanities and social sciences workflows, and it is an easy and fun language to learn. This introductory 3-day, 6-hour course will walk you through the basics of programming in Python starting at the beginner’s level. We will cover the main language features – variables and data types, conditionals, lists, for/while loops, list comprehensions, dictionaries, writing functions, and working with external libraries, doing many exercises along the way. In the second part we will take a look at some of the libraries in more details, including pandas for working with large tables, simple plotting with matplotlib, and few others.

Instructor: Alex Razoumov (SFU)

Prerequisites: None

Software: We will be using Python on our training cluster, so no need to install it on your computer. However, in the long run you would probably benefit from Python on your computer, so you might want to look into this. To access the training cluster, you will need a remote secure shell (SSH) client installed on your computer in order to participate in the course exercises. On Windows we recommend the free Home Edition of MobaXterm. On Mac and Linux computers SSH is usually pre-installed (try typing ssh in a terminal to make sure it is there).