Learning objectives

By the end of this course, learners should be able to:

• Understand and apply core programming concepts, such as
  • assignment of values to variables
  • working with different data types
  • using loops and conditional statements
  • calling functions and methods
• Complete programming exercises
• Create simple scripts to:
  • read text from files and write text to files
  • read tabular data from files
  • transform or apply operations on tabular data
  • create simple charts from tabular data

Topics covered

• Using Jupyter notebooks
• Variables and data types
• Conditional and repeated execution of code
• Lists and dictionaries
• Working with Strings
• Functions, modules and packages
• Working with files and folders
• Acquiring data
• Data analysis with Python
• Data visualisation
• Interactive mapping
• Regular expressions (if there is enough time)

Target audience

Faculty and staff affiliated with Leiden University who would like to learn programming. We expect no previous experience, but do expect active participation.

Format

The course consists of interactive sessions with instruction, live coding, exercises and Q&A. Additional exercises are suggested as homework. Attendance of all sessions as well as completion of the homework exercises are strongly suggested. The total workload is estimated to be around 35 hours.