CDSE Days 2020 Python Workshop

Welcome to the Python workshop page. Below is some information about the workshop and how to prepare for it. Additional materials will be posted here later on. I am looking forward to meeting you on March 30!

Bernard Badzioch

General information

• The workshop will present basic features of Python and Jupyter Notebook. No Python background is expected, but we will be proceeding at a brisk pace, so general programming experience will be helpful. In the second part of the workshop I will demonstrate a few useful Python libraries - requests, pandas and beautiful soup, and show they can be used for gathering and analyzing data.

• This will be a hands-on workshop - we will write and execute code the entire time. All participants need to bring laptops. Any operating system (Windows/Mac/Linux) is fine. Instructions how to install software we will use are posted below.

• I set up a Piazza page for the workshop. Please sign up so you can post questions and comments before, during, and after the workshop.

Software Installation

1. Install the Anaconda distribution of Python 3.7. Be sure to select the 3.7 version.

   If you have Anaconda previously installed, make sure that it includes Python 3.6, 3.7 or 3.8, and fairly recent versions of the the Jupter Notebook and the following Python packages: numpy, matplotlib, bokeh, pandas, requests, Beautiul Soup (bs4). Upgrade if needed. If you are installing Anaconda for the first time, you don’t need to worry about it, everything is included in the distribution.

2. A part of the Anaconda distribution is the Jupyter Notebook app. It can be launched by typing:

   jupyter notebook
   

   in a terminal (Mac and Linux) or command prompt (Windows). Once you execute this command, a web browser will open showing Jupyter Notebook dashboard. Here is a short video by prof. Lorena Barbra which demonstrates basic functionality of the Jupyter Notebook (watching the first 4 minutes or so will be enough for now):

   
   
   

3. To make sure that everything went fine, start Jupyter Notebook, copy and paste the following code into a code cell, and execute the cell. The code will check which version of Python you are using, and if the Python packages listed above are available on your computer. If you notice error messages, please contact me either on Piazza or by email badzioch@buffalo.edu.

   from importlib import import_module
   import sys
   ok = True
   major, minor = sys.version_info[:2]
   if not (major == 3 and minor >= 6):
       print("ERROR: Your are using Python {}.{}. Please upgrade to Python 3.7.\n".format(major, minor))
       ok = False
   else:
       print(6*" "+ "Python {}.{} : OK".format(major, minor))
       for module in ["numpy", "pandas", "bs4", "matplotlib", "bokeh", "requests"]:
           try:
               m = import_module(module)
               ver = m.__version__
               print("{:>10} {:<6}: OK".format(module, ver))
           except ImportError:
               print("{:>16} : ERROR".format(module))
               ok = False
   if ok:
       print("\nEverything seems to be working fine!")