March 10, 12, 24, 2020
1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Instructors: Eric Chu, Shawn Hsueh
Helpers: Arjun Baghela, Elnaz Mohammadi, Marlen Petersen, Pranav Sampara
Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.
For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Best Practices for Scientific Computing".
Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
Where: Room 121 LSK Leonard S. Klinck Building 6356 Agricultural Rd Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.
When: March 10, 12, 24, 2020.
Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).
Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organizers have checked that:
Contact: Please email eric.chu@msl.ubc.ca for more information.
Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct.This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.
Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.
| Before | Pre-workshop survey |
| 1:00 | Running and Quitting |
| 1:15 | Variables and Assignment |
| 1:35 | Data Types and Type Conversion |
| 2:00 | Built-in Functions and Help |
| 2:30 | Break |
| 2:40 | Libraries |
| 3:00 | Reading Tabular Data into DataFrames |
| 3:30 | Pandas DataFrames |
| 4:00 | END |
| 1:00 | Plotting |
| 1:30 | Lists |
| 2:00 | For loops |
| 2:30 | Break |
| 2:40 | Writing Functions |
| 3:05 | Variable Scope |
| 3:30 | Conditionals |
| 3:55 | Post-workshop Survey |
| 4:00 | END |
To participate in a Software Carpentry workshop, you will need access to the software described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.
We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.
Python is a popular language for research computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. Installing all of its research packages individually can be a bit difficult, so we recommend Anaconda, an all-in-one installer.
Regardless of how you choose to install it, please make sure you install Python version 3.x (e.g., 3.6 is fine).
We will teach Python using the Jupyter Notebook, a programming environment that runs in a web browser (Jupyter Notebook will be installed by Anaconda). For this to work you will need a reasonably up-to-date browser. The current versions of the Chrome, Safari and Firefox browsers are all supported (some older browsers, including Internet Explorer version 9 and below, are not).
bash Anaconda3-and then press Tab to autocomplete the full file name. The name of file you just downloaded should appear.
yes and press enter to approve the license.
Press Enter to approve the default location
for the files.
Type yes and press Enter
to prepend Anaconda to your PATH
(this makes the Anaconda distribution the default Python).