scriptsurge/ghent1516

Python for the Humanities - Syllabus (Ghent, 2015-2016)

Introduction to Python Programming for the Humanities (Ghent course, 2015-2016)

Course schedule

Below goes an overview of the schedule for the course. Please take into account that you will have to thoroughly prepare various assignments at home before each workshop (except the 1st one). The sessions always take place between 10:00 and 13:00, but please note that the location is not always the same:

• December 4, 2015 | Introductory session | Meeting Room English (3rd floor Blandijn)
• January 8, 2016 | Revisiting Chapters 1-8 | Room 100.017 (ground floor Blandijn)
• January 15, 2016 | Numpy and Pandas | Room 100.017 (ground floor Blandijn)
• January 28, 2016 | Sklearn | Room 100.017 (ground floor Blandijn)
• February 19, 2016 | Data carpentry | Meeting Room English (3rd floor Blandijn)
• March 11, 2016 | Project work | Didacticum (Rozier)

Installation instructions

In this section, we will guide through the necessary steps to set up your computer for the course.

Download course materials

This series of workshops consists of a series of chapters in the form of so-called "notebooks". These materials should be downloaded by clicking on the "download ZIP" button in the right column on this page. Unzip the file and save it somewhere on your computer. Below, we will assume that you unzipped this file on your desktop.

Install Python 3

Please install the Anaconda distribution of Python, which is a package which comes with most of the functionality etc. which you will need for these workshops. Direct your browser to http://continuum.io/downloads#py34 and download the graphical installer. Double-click the downloaded file and install the Python distribution system-wide. Make sure that you download Python 3.

Once installed, open a terminal (on Linux or Mac OS X) or a command prompt (on Windows) and first cd to the directory in which you saved the tutorial. For Mac OS X users:

cd /Users/your-user-name/Desktop/ghent1516

For Linux users:

cd /home/your-user-name/Desktop/ghent1516

For Windows users:

cd c:\Users\your-user-name\Desktop\ghent1516

where you need to replace your-user-name with your actual user name on your computer! Next type:

ipython notebook

If this returns an error message such as "Command not found", please try running with:

jupyter notebook

This will launch the jupyter notebook in your browser. Click on the appropriate link to open the first chapter etc.

Download Sublime Text

For this course, you will need a decent, cross-platform text editor. We recommend installing Sublime Text 3. Just surf to the download tab and install the editor.

Links to static Notebooks

If you are unable to install or run the notebooks, you can use the following static versions of the course chapters. Note that these pages do not allow you to execute any code:

• Chapter 1: Variables
• Chapter 2: Collections
• Chapter 3: Conditions
• Chapter 4: Loops
• Chapter 5: Functions and files
• Chapter 6: Regular expressions
• Chapter 7: More on loops
• Chapter 8: Parsing XML