1 Welcome to…
TFI eWorkshop | Using Python To Tell Stories With Data
About this eWorkshop
Abstract
Data is all-powerful; it can make or break scientific theories and cast far-reaching influence on, for example, our beliefs and society. A pertinent example is the use (and misuse) of data in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. All this has highlighted the need to, at least, teach simple analytical and visualisation skills and tools to gain insights from data.
Python is a friendly, extremely popular and powerful computational language that is free. Python is versatile and can be used for simple visualisation and analytical tasks or even to interrogate big data sets. This workshop will gently guide you to using Python to visualise data and to make simple statistical queries. This will equip you and your students with a powerful computational tool that can readily be used to gain insight into scientific data. Learning Python will also open other endless computational possibilities (e.g. machine learning, image analysis).
No prior programming knowledge is expected, just lots of enthusiasm and a sense of humour.
Workflow
| Dates | Part | Time | Things to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 11 Onwards | Before Workshop |
– Create (free) Google Account to access Colab – Watch 10 min video to learn the basics of Python – Practice exercises for Python basics |
|
| September 18 | Workshop | 10:00 AM | Introduction to SPS and the Workshop (Prof. Liou Yih Cherng) |
| September 11 Onwards | Before Workshop | 10:15 AM | Some Colab Basics |
| (Chammika Udalagama) | 15 mins | ||
| September 18 | Workshop | 10:30 AM | Basic plotting using matplotlib (Kai Ze Tee, Chammika Udalagama) |
| September 18 | Workshop | 11:15 AM | Exploratory Analysis + Visualistion using Pandas (Darren Teo, Chammika Udalagama) |
| September 18 | Workshop | 12:00 PM | Analysing COVID-19 data using Pandas (Darren Teo, Chammika Udalagama) |
| September 18 | Workshop | 12:45 PM | Discussion. Survey (About workshop, requests & possible collaborations) |
| September 18 | Workshop | 1:00 PM | Workshop ends |
- We will email the participants more details, closer to the date of the workshop.
Aims & Objectives
Aims
- To help those of you who want to start programming to get started.
- We do not expect your code to be super-efficient; it just needs to work. Perfection can come later.
- You can borrow code from the internet but you should at least know what it is doing even if you do not know how.
- Learn the least amount of code and concepts that can achieve the most common tasks related to data visualisation.
In particular, we will focus on code related to:
- basic Python
- handling data
- plotting.
Objectives
By the end of this workshops, you will be able to:
- Use Python (matplotlib) to produce high quality plots
- Use Python (pandas) to query simple datasets
- Use Python (pandas + matplotlib) to produce visualisations of COVID-19 data.
- Indentify and apply core principles for effective visualisation of data.
Supporting Institutions
- Temasek Foundation International (TFI)
- National University of Singapore (NUS)
- Special Programme in Science (SPS, sps.nus.edu.sg)
- Science Communication Programme, Faculty of Science