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Course Overview

Welcome to the Python Introductory Education Series (PIES) course. This course is composed of four lessons (see schedule below) and is meant to help those with no or limited experience in Python get started using this general purpose scripting language for data analyses. Each one-hour lesson will be followed by an optional one-hour help session. At the end of this course series, participants should

  • Have obtained a broad overview of Python, including
    • Familiarity with tools used to write Python code
    • Knowledge of Python command syntax
    • Ability to find help for Python commands
    • Knowledge of where to find Python packages
    • Familiarity with self-learning resources
  • Be able to describe Python data types and structures and provide examples of where some of the data structures are used
  • Know how to work with and wrangle tabular data
  • Be able to construct data visualizations

Lesson schedule:

A Biowulf account is needed for this class. Visit the Biowulf User Dashboard to unlock an inactive account. For instructions on obtaining a Biowulf account, visit https://hpc.nih.gov/docs/accounts.html.

Example data used in this course

Download data used in this course