python

Python Intro

This course introduces the Python programming language as a general-purpose tool for solving everyday problems. Our focus is data journalism but the skills covered are generally useful for any project that calls for data acquisition and analysis.

Below are the major topics we'll cover:

• Python overview
  • What is Python?
  • Coding contexts and workflow
• Core Python syntax and features
  • Basic data types (integers, strings, lists, dicts)
  • Expressions and statements
  • Variables as storage containers
  • Flow control ("for" loops and if/elif/else)
  • Built-in functions such as len and print
  • Importing and using libraries (Python Standard Library and 3rd-party packages)
• Python features for readable, reusable code
  • Functions
  • Modules
  • Packages
• Practical skills for getting things done
  • Embracing errors
  • Counting and filtering
  • Reading and writing text files, CSVs and JSON
  • Downloading files
  • Sorting
  • Creating data pipelines with modules
  • Analyzing data with Jupyter notebooks
  • Geocoding