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ONLINE COURSE – Python for data science, machine learning, and scientific computing (PDMS02)

4th May 2020 - 8th May 2020

£500.00
ONLINE COURSE – Python for data science, machine learning, and scientific computing (PDMS02)

Event Date

Monday, May 4th, 2020

Course Format

This is a ‘LIVE COURSE’ – the instructor will be delivering lectures and coaching attendees through the accompanying computer practical’s via video link, a good internet connection is essential.

Time Zone

TIME ZONE – GMT – however all sessions will be recorded and made available allowing attendees from different time zones to follow.

Please email oliverhooker@prstatistics.com for full details or to discuss how we can accommodate you).

About This Course

Python is one of the most widely used and highly valued programming languages in the world, and is especially widely used in data science, machine learning, and in other scientific computing applications. This course provides both a general introduction to programming with Python and a comprehensive introduction to using Python for data science, machine learning, and scientific computing. The major topics that we will cover include the following: the fundamentals of general purpose programming in Python; using Jupyter notebooks as a reproducible interactive Python programming environment; numerical computing using numpy; data processing and manipulations using pandas; data visualization using matplotlib, seaborn, ggplot, bokeh, altair, etc; symbolic mathematics using sympy; data science and machine learning using scikit-learn, keras, and tensorflow; Bayesian modelling using PyMC3 and PyStan; high performance computing with Cython, Numba, IPyParallel, Dask. Overall, this course aims to provide a solid introduction to Python generally as a programming language, and to its principal tools for doing data science, machine learning, and scientific computing. (Note that this course will focus on Python 3 exclusively given that Python 2 has now reached it end of life).

Intended Audiences

This course is aimed at anyone who is interested in learning the fundamentals of Python generally and especially how Python can be used for data science, broadly defined. Python and Python based data science is applicable to academic research in all fields of science and engineering as well as data intensive industries and services such as finance, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, IT, and manufacturing.

Venue

Delivered remotely

Course Details

Availability – 15 places

Duration – 5 days

Contact hours – Approx. 35 hours

ECT’s – Equal to 3 ECT’s

Language – English

Teaching Format

This course will be hands-on and workshop based. Throughout each day, there will be some lecture style presentation, i.e., using slides, introducing and explaining key concepts. However, even in these cases, the topics being covered will include practical worked examples that will work through together.

Assumed quantitative knowledge

We will assume only a minimal amount of familiarity with some general statistical and mathematical concepts. These concepts will arise when we discuss numerical computing, symbolic maths, and statistics and machine learning. However, expertise and proficiency with these concepts are not necessary. Anyone who has taken any undergraduate (Bachelor’s) level course on (applied) statistics or mathematics can be assumed to have sufficient familiarity with these concepts.

Assumed computer background

No prior experience with Python or any other programming language is required. Of course, any familiarity with any other programming will be helpful, but is not required.

Equipment and software requirements

Attendees of the course should bring a laptop computer with Python (version 3) and the Python packages that we will use (such as numpy, pandas, sympy, etc) installed. All the required software is free and open source and is available on Windows, MacOs, and Linux. Instructions on how to install and configure all the software will be provided before the start of the course. We will also provide time during the workshops to ensure that all software is installed and configured properly.

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PLEASE READ – CANCELLATION POLICY

Cancellations are accepted up to 28 days before the course start date subject to a 25% cancellation fee. Cancellations later than this may be considered, contact oliverhooker@prstatistics.com. Failure to attend will result in the full cost of the course being charged. In the unfortunate event that a course is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances a full refund of the course fees will be credited.

If you are unsure about course suitability, please get in touch by email to find out more oliverhooker@prstatistics.com

COURSE PROGRAMME

Monday 4th

Classes from 09:30 to 17:30

Topic 1: The What and Why of Python. In order to provide some general background and context, we will describe Python where came from, what its major design principles and intended use was originally, and where and how it is now currently used. We will see that Python is now extremely widely used, especially in powering the web, in data science and machine learning, and system level programming. Here, we also compare and contrast Python and R, given that both are extremely widely used in data science.

Topic 2: Installing and setting up Python. There are many ways to write and execute code in Python. Which to use depends on personal preference and the type of programming that is being done. Here, we will explore some of the commonly used Integrated Development Environments (IDE) for Python, which include Spyder and PyCharm. Here, we will also mention and briefly describe Jupyter notebooks, which are widely used for scientific applications of Python, and are an excellent tool for doing reproducible interactive work. We will cover Jupyter more extensively starting on Day 3. Also as part of this topic, we will describe how to use virtual environments and package installers such as pip and conda.

Topic 3: Introduction to Python: Data Structures. We will begin our coverage of programming with Python by introducing its different data structures.and operations on data structures This will begin with the elementary data types such as integers, floats, Booleans, and strings, and the common operations that can be applied to these data types. We will then proceed to the so-called collection data structures, which primarily include lists, dictionaries, tuples, and sets.

Topic 4: Introduction to Python: Programming. Having introduced Python’s data types, we will now turn to how to program in Python. We will begin with iteration, such as the for and while loops. We will then cover conditionals and functions.

Tuesday 5th

Classes from 09:30 to 17:30

Topic 5: Modules, packages, and imports. Python is extended by hundreds of thousands of additional packages.Here, we will cover how to install and import these packages, and also how to write our own modules and packages.

Topic 6: Numerical programming with numpy. Although not part of Python’s official standard library, the numpy package is the part of the de facto standard library for any scientific and numerical programming. Here we will introduce numpy, especially numpy arrays and their built in functions (i.e. “methods”).

Topic 7: Data processing with pandas. The pandas library provides means to represent and manipulate data frames. Like numpy, pandas can be see as part of the de facto standard library for data oriented uses of Python.

Topic 8: Object Oriented Programming. Python is an object oriented language and object oriented programming in Python is extensively used in anything beyond the very simplest types of programs. Moreover, compared to other languages, object oriented programming in Python is relatively easy to learn. Here, we provide a comprehensive introduction to object oriented programming in Python.

• Topic 9: Other Python programming features. In this section, we will cover some important features of Python not yet covered. These include exception handling, list and dictionary comprehensions, itertools, advanced collection types including defaultdict, anonymous functions, decorators, etc.

Wednesday 6th

Classes from 09:30 to 17:30

Topic 10: Jupyter notebooks and Jupyterlab. Although we have already introduced Jupyter notebooks, here we will explore them properly. Jupyter notebooks are reproducible and interactive computing environment that support numerous programming languages, although Python remains the principal language used in Jupyter notebooks. Here, we’ll explore their major features and how they can be shared easily using GitHub and Binder.

Topic 11: Data Visualization. Python provides many options for data visualization. The matplotlib library is a low level plotting library that allows for considerable control of the plot, albeit at the price of a considerable amount of low level code. Based on matplotlib, and providing a much higher level interface to the plot, is the seaborn library. This allows us to produce complex data visualizations with a minimal amount of code. Similar to seaborn is ggplot, which is a direct port of the widely used R based visualization library. In this section, we will also consider a set of other visualization libraries for Python. These include plotly, bokeh, and altair.

Topic 12: Symbolic mathematics. Symbolic mathematics systems, also known as computer algebra systems, allow us to algebraically manipulate and solve symbolic mathematical expression. In Python, the principal symbolic mathematics library is sympy. This allows us simplify mathematical expressions, compute derivatives, integrals, and limits, solve equations, algebraically manipulate matrices, and more.

Topic 13: Statistical data analysis. In this section, we will describe how to perform widely used statistical analysis in Python. Here we will start with the statsmodels package, which provides linear and generalized linear models as well as many other widely used statistical models. We will also introduce the scikit-learn package, which we will more widely use on Day 4, and use it for regression and classification analysis.

Thursday 7th

Classes from 09:30 to 17:30

Topic 14: Machine learning. Python is arguably the most widely used language for machine learning. In this section, we will explore some of the major Python machine learning tools that are part of the scikit-learn package. This section continues our coverage of this package that began in Topic 12 on Day 3. Here, we will cover machine learning tools such as support vector machines, decision trees, random forests, k-means clustering, dimensionality reduction, model evaluation, and cross-validation.

Topic 15: Neural networks and deep learning. A popular subfield of machine learning involves the use of artificial neural networks and deep learning methods. In this section, we will explore neural networks and deep learning using the keras library, which is a high level interface to neural network and deep learning libraries such as Tensorflow, Theano, or the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK). Examples that we will consider here include image classification and other classification problems taken from, for example, the UCI Machine Learning Repository.

Friday 8th

Classes from 09:30 to 16:00

Topic 16: Bayesian models. Two probabilistic programming languages for Bayesian modelling in Python are PyMC3 and PyStan. PyMC3 is a Python native probabilistic programming language, while PyStan is the Python interface to the Stan programming language, which is also very widely used in R. Both PyMC3 and PyStan are extremely powerful tools and can implement arbitrary probabilistic models. Here, we will not have time to explore either in depth, but will be able to work through a number of nontrivial examples, which will illustrate the general feature and usage of both languages.

Topic 17: High performance Python. The final topic that we will consider in this course is high performance computing with Python. While many of the tools that we considered above extremely quickly because they interface with compiled code written in C/C++ or Fortran, Python itself is a high level dynamically typed and interpreted programming language. As such, native Python code does not execute as fast as compiled languages such as C/C++ or Fortran. However, it is possible to achieve compiled language speeds in Python by compiling Python code. Here, we will consider Cython and Numba, both of which allow us achieve C/C++ speeds in Python with minimal extensions to our code. Also, in this section, we will consider parallelization in Python, in particular using IPyParallel and Dask, both of which allow easy parallel and distributed processing using Python.

Course Instructor

    • Dr. Mark Andrews

    Works At
    Senior Lecturer, Psychology Department, Nottingham Trent University, England

    • Teaches
    • Free 1 day intro to r and r studio (FIRR)
    • Introduction To Statistics Using R And Rstudio (IRRS03)
    • Introduction to generalised linear models using r and rstudio (IGLM)
    • Introduction to mixed models using r and rstudio (IMMR)
    • Nonlinear regression using generalized additive models (GAMR)
    • Introduction to hidden markov and state space models (HMSS)
    • Introduction to machine learning and deep learning using r (IMDL)
    • Model selection and model simplification (MSMS)
    • Data visualization using gg plot 2 (r and rstudio) (DVGG)
    • Data wrangling using r and rstudio (DWRS)
    • Reproducible data science using rmarkdown, git, r packages, docker, make & drake, and other tools (RDRP)
    • Introduction/fundamentals of bayesian data analysis statistics using R (FBDA)
    • Bayesian data analysis (BADA)
    • Bayesian approaches to regression and mixed effects models using r and brms (BARM)
    • Introduction to stan for bayesian data analysis (ISBD)
    • Introduction to unix (UNIX01)
    • Introduction to python (PYIN03)
    • Introduction to scientific, numerical, and data analysis programming in python (PYSC03)
    • Machine learning and deep learning using python (PYML03)
    • Python for data science, machine learning, and scientific computing (PDMS02)

     

    Personal website

ResearchGate

Google Scholar

Mark Andrews is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology Department at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. Mark is a graduate of the National University of Ireland and obtained an MA and PhD from Cornell University in New York. Mark’s research focuses on developing and testing Bayesian models of human cognition, with particular focus on human language processing and human memory. Mark’s research also focuses on general Bayesian data analysis, particularly as applied to data from the social and behavioural sciences. Since 2015, he and his colleague Professor Thom Baguley have been funded by the UK’s ESRC funding body to provide intensive workshops on Bayesian data analysis for researchers in the social sciences.

Details

Start:
4th May 2020
End:
8th May 2020
Cost:
£500.00
Event Category:

Venue

Delivered remotely (United Kingdom)
Western European Time, United Kingdom + Google Map

Tickets

The numbers below include tickets for this event already in your cart. Clicking "Get Tickets" will allow you to edit any existing attendee information as well as change ticket quantities.
Tickets are no longer available