Python Course for Beginners

Course Instructors:

Malvika Sharan and Marc Gouw

Why Learn Python?

Python has grown in the last ten years to become one of the most widely-used programming languages in biology. This increasing popularity reflects how easy Python is to learn compared with other languages, and how adaptable it is to a wide variety of different tasks. Simultaneously, the rise of data-driven approaches to science means that programming skills are becoming more and more important for biologists.

About the course:

This course aims to teach basic Python programming skills to the life-scientists who wish to carry out repeated tasks to deal with biological data. The goal of the course is to enable them to use Python scripting to automate their tasks and carry out analysis of their data reproducibly.

Course content:

– The basic concepts and building blocks of programming in Python
– Automating repetitive tasks
– Handling different types of data using the concept of Data Structure
– Reading and handling data from a file
– Introduction to Python module

Content breakdown:

Day-1

• Python basics for absolute beginners
• Data structures
• Flow control (For loops, If statements)

Day-2

• Functions
• Modules
• Scripting

The course materials will include a set of practical problems/exercises that could be handled using Python skills.

Learning outcome:

After attending the course, you will have a good understanding of the core themes of programming, and be able to write your own Python programs, to automate repetitive analysis tasks.

Prerequisites:

We do not expect the participants to have prior knowledge of scripting. This is a course for the researchers who are interested in learning the automation of their tasks such as dealing with a large number of files to carry out identical or similar analysis using Python programming language.

Please refer to this course material to get an idea of what will be covered in this course: https://git.embl.de/grp-bio-it/ITPP

Note: The computers will be available at the workshop venue but participants can bring their own laptop with the Anaconda Python Distribution (version 3.5) installed.

Course Fee:

EMBL Bio-IT will offer the course for free to all EMBL members.

The external participants will be changed with a course fee of 60 Euros to cover the lunch and infrastructure related cost. The invoice details will be shared via email.

Cancellation and No-Show:

The registration can be canceled for the free of charge till Mar 29, 2018.

The participants will be charged a cancellation fee (if canceled after Mar 29, 2018) or no-show fee of 50 Euros. The invoice details will be shared via email.

Bookings