hw_1.md

Homework 1

General assignment information. Note that this isn't a template notebook, hence there's no 🚀 above. You will create a blank notebook for this one.

Tutorials

• 10 minutes to pandas
• Indexing Basics
• Group by: split-apply-combine
  • Beginning up to "GroupBy object attributes"
  • "Aggregation" up to "The aggregate() method"

Coding

You'll do the following in a notebook. Make it read like a blog post. Pretend you're explaining to a peer who hasn't taken this class. You don't need to teach them to code, but they should be able to follow what's going on.

Steps

1. Find a dataset.
   • It must have at least one numeric column.
   • Don't spend too long on this step.
2. If there's more than one numeric column, pick one.
3. Create a new notebook.
4. Using pandas:
   1. Read in the data.
   2. Compute:
      • The mean
      • The median
      • The mode
   3. Do a groupby() with an aggregation.
5. Do the same thing, but with pure Python (without pandas).
6. Write a conclusion, covering both:
   • The takeaways of the analysis
   • Reflecting on the process
7. Did you use an external source, including generative AI? Please explain, or say that you didn't.

Now turn in the assignment.

Tutorials, continued

1. Read The Joys (and Woes) of the Craft of Software Engineering
   • Note not everything in there is applicable to data analysis
2. Filtering/indexing DataFrames
   • Filter specific rows from a DataFrame
   • Boolean indexing
3. Learn about functions
   • Video
   • Blog post
4. Brackets in Python and pandas
5. Coding Style Guides - Please skim these; I don't expect you to understand and follow everything in them. The most important guidelines to pay attention to are indentation and keeping each statement on its own line.
   • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python
   • PEP 8
6. Guide to commenting your code
7. Quartz Guide to Bad Data

Optional

• Learn about data dictionaries
• Glance through pandas' comparison with other tools for any you are familiar with
• Selecting Subsets of Data in Pandas: Part 1 and Part 2

Participation

Reminder about the between-class participation requirement.