Introduction To Programming: Plotting And Programming With Python

This Software Carpentry workshop will introduce the building blocks of the Python scripting environment. Participants will start by exploring the command-line interface and basic programming concepts using Unix, before moving on to learn about simple and complex data types, conditionals and looping in Python.

This workshop will prepare participants to carry out batch analysis and equip them with the knowledge to start creating automated pipelines to increase data processing power and productivity.

Recommended Participants

This workshop is recommended for researchers looking for scripting capabilities to run batch analyses and link processes to create a basic pipeline, or to automated repeated tasks for efficiency and reproducibility.

While it is designed to be suitable for people with no previous experience with Python or other programming languages, participants do need to be confident and experienced with using computers, and a familiarity with command-line interfaces will be helpful.

Learning Objectives

• Use Python to read and write data from and to files

• Perform simple scripting operations using loops and conditionals to carry out batch analyses

• Generate data plots with Python

Syllabus

Topics covered will include:

• Fundamental programming concepts and how to apply them in Python

• Python data types and data structures

• Importing functions into Python using modules

• Programming structures: loops, conditionals, and functions 

• Using scripting language to automate data analysis pipelines