Getting Started with Python for Data Scientists

Description

Python started off as a general-purpose programming language, but in the last decade it has become a popular environment for data science. The reason is that the community of Python users have recently created useful add-on packages which are suitable for data manipulation, preparation, visualization and analysis. This practical course introduces both base Python and the most important packages in a hands-on way with many exercises.

The objective of the course is that you are capable of doing data management, visualization and analysis in Python on your own.

Python is an open-source programming language which you can freely download from https://www.anaconda.com/download/ (i.e. the Anaconda distribution). Python version 3 or higher is recommended.

This course is part of a larger course series in Data Analysis consisting of 19 individual modules. Find more information and enroll for this module via www.ipvw-ices.ugent.be.

Program

• Introduction: Python and the Anaconda distribution
• Data types: numbers, strings, lists, tuples, sets and dictionaries
• Automation: control flow and self-defined functions
• Importing data and exporting results
• Managing data with NumPy and pandas
• Graphs with matplotlib and seaborn
• Statistical analysis with statsmodels