hw_1.md

Homework 1

General assignment information.{% if id == "columbia" %} Note that this isn't a template notebook, hence there's no 🚀 above. You will create a blank notebook for this one.{% endif %}

Tutorials

• 10 minutes to pandas

Coding

You'll complete this assignment using pandas. Steps:

1. Find a dataset.
   • It must have:
     • At least one numeric column
     • Between one thousand and one million rows
       • If it's larger than that, you can make it smaller.
   • 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. Read in the data.
5. Compute:
   • The mean
   • The median
   • The mode
6. Do a groupby() with an aggregation.

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. 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
5. Guide to commenting your code
6. Quartz Guide to Bad Data

Optional

• Learn about data dictionaries
• Glance through pandas' comparison with other tools for any you are familiar with
• More on indexing:
  • How to Select Rows from Pandas DataFrame
  • Selecting Subsets of Data in Pandas: Part 1 and Part 2

Participation

Reminder about the between-class participation requirement.