How to Study in this class

This is a programming intensive course and it’s about data science. This course is designed to help you learn how to program for data science and in the process build general skills in both programming and using data to understand the world. Learning two things at once is more complex. In this page, I break down how I expect learning to work for this class.

Remember the goal is to avoid this:

Why this way?

A new book that might be of interest if you find programming classes hard is the Programmers Brain As of 2021-09-07, it is available for free by clicking on chapters at that linked table of contents section.

Learning to program requires iterative practice. It does not require memorizing all of the specific commands, but instead learning the basic patterns.
Using reference materials frequently is a built in part of programming, most languages have built in help as a part of the language for this reason. This course is designed to have you not only learn the material, but also to build skill in learning to program. Following these guidelines will help you build habits to not only be successful in this class, but also in future programming.

Where are your help tools?

In Python and Jupyter notebooks, what help tools do you have?

Learning in class

Important

My goal is to use class time so that you can be successful with minimal frustration while working outside of class time.

Programming requires both practical skills and abstract concepts. During class time, we will cover the practical aspects and introduce the basic concepts. You will get to see the basic practical details and real examples of debugging during class sessions. Learning to debug something you’ve never encountered before and setting up your programming envrionment, for example, are high frustration activities, when you’re learning, because you don’t know what you don’t know. On the other hand, diving deeper into options and more complex applications of what you have already seen in class, while challenging, is something I’m confident that you can all be successful at with minimal frustration once you’ve seen basic ideas in class. My goal is that you can repeat the patterns and processes we use in class outside of class to complete assignments, while acknowledging that you will definitely have to look things up and read documentation outside of class.

Each class will open with some time to review what was covered in the last session before adding new material.

To get the most out of class sessions, you should have a laptop with you. During class you should be following along with Dr. Brown, typing and running the same code. You’ll answer questions on Prismia chat, when you do so, you should try running necessary code to answer those questions. If you encounter errors, share them via prismia chat so that we can see and help you.

After class

After class, you should practice with the concepts introduced.
This means reviewing the notes: both yours from class and the annotated notes posted to the course website.
When you review the notes, you should be adding comments on tricky aspects of the code and narrative text between code blocks in markdown cells. While you review your notes and the annotated course notes, you should also read the documentation for new modules, libraries, or functions introduced that day.

In the annotated notes, there will often be extra questions or ideas on how to extend and practice the concepts. Try these out.

If you find anything hard to understand or unclear, write it down to bring to class the next day.

Assignments

In assignments, you will be asked to practice with specific concepts at an intermediate level. Assignments will apply the concepts from class with minimal extensions. You will probably need to use help funcitons and read documentation to complete assignments, but mostly to look up things you saw in class and make minor variations. Most of what you need for assignments will be in the class notes, which is another reason to read them after class.

Portfolios

In portfolios, your goal is to extend and apply the concepts taught in class and practiced in assignments to solve more realistic problms. You may also reflect on your learning in order to demonstrate deep understanding. These will require significant reading beyond what we cover in class.