Python

Python Crash Courses

University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
UNC Research Computing

Setup

Installing the Anaconda Distribution.

If you run into problems during installation, stop by one of our drop-in installation help sessions:
     Thursday, September 24, 2020, 11am-12pm : Meeting ID: 952 2531 5369
     Monday, September 28, 2020, 11am-12pm : Meeting ID: 983 2359 7820

View our introductory orientation to Python and Spyder (YouTube) before Week 1.

Week 1

We’ll be:

• quickly introducing fundamental Python concepts like variables, object types, and indexing
• working through a simple programming example with a COVID-19 dataset

The concepts are covered in more depth in our full-length Introductory Materials, if you’d like to review beforehand.

Week 2

We’ll introduce Jupyter Notebooks and literate programming. Then we’ll return to the Introductory Materials to review fundamental concepts, packages, file paths, and a few important extensions.

Week 3

The pandas package provides a wide array of tools for working with tabular datasets in Python. This lesson also surveys some of the major data visualization tools available in Python.

Practice Exercises (Introduction)

Exercises
Solutions

Pandas Exercises (Week 3)

Exercises
Solutions

Getting Help!

• Davis Library Research Hub
• Odum Statistical Walk-in Help
• Research Computing (and UNC’s clusters)

References and Resources

• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python
• Python Cheatsheets
• Python Programming for the Humanities
• Python Data Science Handbook This free ebook emphasizes Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, Pandas and other data analysis packages in Python, assuming some familiarity with the basic principles of the language.
  • Whirlwind Tour of Python
• Stack Overflow
• Google!

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