Mailman 3 March 2020 - Edu-sig

Part-time opportunities for Python instructors
by Merav Yuravlivker May 7, 2024

May 7, 2024

Hi there, My name is Merav Yuravlivker, and I'm the CEO of Data Society - we deliver data science academies to Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and other international organizations. We're currently looking for part-time Python instructors and TAs, and my friend Jackie Kazil recommended I reach out to you and your list serv. All of these opportunities can be available for people who are employed full-time, professors, or grad students. We pay well and provide all the materials for the instructor, as well as instructor training and support. If possible, would you please be able to share the following blurb? Please let me know if there is anything else you need from me. Much appreciated! Best, Merav --- Data Society, a fast-growing data science training company, is looking for awesome Python instructors and TAs! We deliver data academies to Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and international organizations. All of our content is built in-house by an expert team of data scientists and instructional designers, so you can focus on what you do best - teach professionals how to find new insights and make their jobs easier. We currently have a few openings for TAs, as well as part-time instructors - all of these opportunities can be available for people who are employed full-time, professors, or grad students. We pay competitively, have a great support team, and provide amazing opportunities for additional projects if you're interested. To learn more, please visit our page for current opportunities <https://t.sidekickopen10.com/s2t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lM8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJN7t5X-F…>, or simply reach out to Merav at merav(a)datasociety.com. -- Schedule a time to meet <https://t.sidekickopen10.com/s1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lM8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJN7t5X-F…> Merav Yuravlivker Data Society, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder 777 6th Street NW, 11th Floor Washington, D.C., 20001 Enterprise: solutions.datasociety.com Consumer: datasociety.com

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a short essay about programming
by kirby urner Dec. 8, 2022

Dec. 8, 2022

A common "error" (not too serious) that I see in beginning Python (and no doubt other languages, but Python is the one I'm teaching), is having a while condition that appears to put a lid on things, but then the flow all leaks away through break statements, such that the "front door" condition is never revisited. while guess != secret: guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") break else: print("Nope, try again...") What's messed up about the above code is you never really go back to the top in the case where you'd get to leave. Rather, you exit by the back door, through break. So in that case, wouldn't have been simpler and more elegant, even more "correct" (dare I say it) to have gone: while True: # no ifs ands or buts guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") break else: print("Nope, try again...") I see lots of heads nodding, and that could be the end of the matter, but then a next question arises: wouldn't this also be a more correct solution?: while guess != secret: guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") continue # instead of break else: print("Nope, try again...") We're back to having a variable while condition, not a boolean constant, but this time we actually exit by means of it, thanks to continue or... while guess != secret: guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") else: print("Nope, try again...") ... thanks to no continue. This last one is getting a thumbs up, but then I'd pause here and say "continue" can be easier on the eyes. It's unambiguous where it takes you, in contrast to having to scan on down the gauntlet, looking for possibly other open doors. "What happens next" should not require scanning ahead too far. Help us not to get lost. Be a civic-minded coder. I'm thinking of a programming style that advises two things: (a) if you use a while condition that's variable, that's expected to change, then your goal should be to always exit because of that, i.e. that should be your only exit point. Even if some other criterion suggests exiting, you have the option to flip that "lid" at the top, to crack that front door, and bounce the ball out. (b) which is why 'continue' is your friend. You are showing the user where your 'break' statements are, except you don't use "break" statements, as you've given a non-constant condition, and your aim is to make that your ONLY exit point. In short: never use break to exit a while loop unless your condition is while True. Instead, always flip the condition and exit through the font door. However, as soon as I make that rule I can think of good reasons to break it. The other programmers in the room are shaking their heads. Won't we lose information, needed elsewhere in the program, if we "artificially" force a True condition to False. Aren't we, in effect, lying? That concern could be addressed. Keep all the info true, just treat the "lid condition" (it "keeps a lid on it") as a flag. Go ahead and remember the user's guess. allowed = 5 tries = 1 exit = False while not exit: # no other way out guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") exit = True # instead of break continue print("Nope, try again...") tries += 1 if tries == allowed: print("You've maxed out") exit = True continue I think we all understand the main issue: writing reader-friendly code, and rules for doing so. There's something comforting about approaching a while loop and knowing its not a leaky sieve, riddled with back doors, maybe even an exit( ) time bomb. But in the recursion world we want a minimum of two exits usually: when another round is called for versus when we've "hit bottom". Can we have it both ways? Conclusions: Lets not be too hasty with rules of thumb and: Lets keep the reader in mind when writing code. Just because the interpreter knows to compute the flow unambiguously, doesn't mean all ways of writing it are equally reader-friendly. What may seem a gratuitous gesture, an unnecessary flourish, may actually promote reader comprehension of your code, and that should be a goal as much as satisfying the interpreter. Kirby

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MineCraft with Python
by Jurgis Pralgauskis Dec. 4, 2022

Dec. 4, 2022

Hi, intro: many kids like MineCraft :) probably you know/heared of MineCraft Pi https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/getting-started-with-minecraft-pi/ But there seems to be Py for real MC http://coderdojotc.readthedocs.io/projects/python-minecraft/en/latest/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Python-coding-for-Minecraft/ PS.: a nice article (from js4MC world) https://github.com/walterhiggins/ScriptCraft/blob/master/docs/YoungPersonsG… -- Jurgis Pralgauskis tel: 8-616 77613; Don't worry, be happy and make things better ;) http://galvosukykla.lt

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COVID-19 Resources, Curricula, Prompts
by Wes Turner March 29, 2020

March 29, 2020

A thread to share [collections of] resources, curriculum ideas, etc. about and for during the COVID-19 epidemic Lots of analyses, some data, some helpful contributions, lots of people learning about exponential growth One video I saw mentioned that a person normal flu infects about 1.3-1.4 other people, but COVID-19 is closer to 3; so what's wrong with this analysis? 1**1.3 1**3 1.3**n 3**n '{:,}'.format(7e9) 1*(3**x) = 7e9 # solve for x with logarithms # Where is the limit with which controls? ## Notebook idea Growth curves: polynomials of degree 0 through 10 ('desic'), exponential, logistic - Exponential growth and epidemics https://youtu.be/Kas0tIxDvrg ## Prompt re: positive, helpful, constructive tone; morale; and amateur data science Here's a prompt for students and teachers alike: Respond to this re: amateur data science, tone, attitude, responsibility: https://www.reddit.com/r/datascience/comments/fm17ja/to_all_data_scientists… ```quote FWIU, there are many unquantified variables: - pre-existing conditions (impossible to factor in without having access to electronic health records; such as those volunteered as part of the Precision Medicine initiative) - policy response - population density - number of hospital beds per capita - number of ventilators per capita - production rate of masks per capita - medical equipment intellectual property right liabilities per territory - treatment protocols - sanitation protocols So, it **is** useful to learn to model exponential growth that's actually logistic due to e.g. herd immunity, hours of sunlight (UVC), effective containment policies. Analyses that compare various qualitative and quantitative aspects of government and community responses and subsequent growth curves should be commended, recognized, and encouraged to continue trying to better predict potential costs. (You can tag epidemiology tools with e.g. "epidemiology" https://github.com/topics/epidemiology ) Are these unqualified resources better spent on other efforts like staying at home and learning data science; rather than asserting superiority over and inadequacy of others? Inclusion criteria for meta-analyses. - "Call to Action to the Tech Community on New Machine Readable COVID-19 Dataset" (March 16, 2020) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/call-action-tech-community-… > “We need to come together as companies, governments, and scientists and work to bring our best technologies to bear across biomedicine, epidemiology, AI, and other sciences. The COVID-19 literature resource and challenge will stimulate efforts that can accelerate the path to solutions on COVID-19.” - https://www.kaggle.com/tags/covid19 - "COVID-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge (CORD-19): An AI challenge with AI2, CZI, MSR, Georgetown, NIH & The White House" https://www.kaggle.com/allen-institute-for-ai/CORD-19-research-challenge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_medicine#Precision_Medicine_Initiat… ``` ## NIH FigShare instance https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/rapidly-share-discover-and-cite-covid… > NIH is assessing the role of a generalist repository for NIH-funded research and has launched the NIH Figshare instance, a pilot project with the generalist repository Figshare You can archive a tag of a [topic-labeled] GitHub repository [containing notebooks] with FigShare. ## Resource Collections https://github.com/topics/2019-ncov https://github.com/topics/covid-19 https://github.com/topics/epidemiology?l=python https://github.com/topics/epidemiology?l=jupyter+notebook Objectively-scored Kaggle competitions: https://www.kaggle.com/tags/covid19 https://github.com/soroushchehresa/awesome-coronavirus On Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 6:35 AM kirby urner <kirby.urner(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Awesome! > > If you do any kind of Youtube on this specific SIR model I hope you'll > link it from the cell and share it here. > > I see some Youtubes like that already (SIR models, including in Python), > but everyone codes a little differently. > > I'd like to go back to high school and do it all again from a student > perspective, now that the curriculum and tools are so vastly different. > > High school should be for any age, and one keeps going back every 10 years > or so. Learn it the new way. > > Kirby > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list -- edu-sig(a)python.org > To unsubscribe send an email to edu-sig-leave(a)python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/edu-sig.python.org/ >

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My SIR Model
by Jorge Garcia March 24, 2020

March 24, 2020

Here's my mostly pyhthonic model, actually it's done in sagecell.sagemath.org. Problem is, how do you predict the parameters alpha, probability if infection, and beta, probability of recovery. My simulation us interactive in that you can change the values of alpha and beta. A higher alpha ir lower beta with skew the infected curve so it peaks higher and sooner. So how do we reduce alpha? We use vaccines we don't have. How do we increase beta? We use antivirals we don't have. All we can do now us stay home and stay apart to reduce alpha and flatten the infected curve! Stay Healthy, A. Jorge García https://sagecell.sagemath.org/?z=eJytlEtv2zAMgO_-FUSKwXbitE67YVgXr4cdBt8K-9…

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Learning Code IRC for kids?
by Jason Blum March 20, 2020

March 20, 2020

Hello! I've been toying with the idea of recruiting mentors to commit to one hour a week to moderate a channel on https://gitter.im/ or https://discordapp.com/ or even IRC, specifically geared towards supporting kids working through https://codecademy.com/, https://trinket.io/ or https://twilio.com/quest or any of dozens of other amazing coding tutorials out there. With so many kids home now, seems like the perfect time kick something off. But I wanted to bounce the idea off folks. Does it already exist? Would you be able to participate? I envision a directory listing hour by hour who is moderating the hour and tagging any specializations (#Python, #Repl.it, #Arduino, etc.), but with the understanding that all general tech support is provided, even if only to steer questions towards the right resource on the web. Same IRC etiquette rules would apply. Sample interactions: kid: How do I get python installed on my dad's laptop: moderator: Hi #kid well I assume your dad is ok with this? I find https://installpython3.com/ pretty well maintained. kid: I'm stuck on this line of code [then pastes in 50 lines of code] moderator: Hi @kid ah cool, Ill try to point you in the right direction, but first lemme introduce you to https://dpaste.org/ kid: How do I [whatever]? moderator: Hi @kid! I dunno, but I've been doing this for 20 years and have yet to encounter a problem someone else didn't solve. Lemme help you research it a little. Let's start with [StackOverflow, PyVideo, Google, ReadTheDocs, DjangoPackages, PyPi, etc] Bottom line is just to keep younger coders from giving up, by giving them an introduction to how vast and awesome this community is. This would not be just another coding site and not open-ended tech support, but rather a chat-based gateway to what's already out there. Does such a thing already exist? Would you sign up one hour a week to mentor? How do we eject violations of https://www.python.org/psf/conduct/ Where does this idea fall apart? Thanks! -Jason Blum Father of four at home right now driving me nuts

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REPL.IT works great for sharing Python examples
by kirby urner March 10, 2020

March 10, 2020

Per usual, we're awash in useful tools, many free, but so little time to learn to use them, it seems. And they all keep evolving. Along those lines: REPL.IT, favored by many a Python teacher, yet so little explored by me. Like with LinkedIn and so many of these Web 2.0 tools, we get so many cool features. Make a Python program public, using 3.8.1 (that's very current now in March 2020), runnable code, blog embeddable. Use a Share feature to create a public Notification. Examples, two of mine from today (tested to work fine on Facebook): https://repl.it/talk/share/Python-Decorators-for-Composing-Functions/30054 https://repl.it/talk/share/Computing-Volumes-in-Tetravolumes-S-and-E-Module… Remember to use Markdown to markup these Notifications (which you can re-edit), same as here on edu-sig where Markdown is the new normal, right? On the first one, I used an embedded asterisk a lot, for Python multiplication, only to discover what I learned about the new edu-sig: Markdown is your friend. Kirby PS: shout out to Jake Vanderplas, the Pycon keynote speaker in Portland that time, who gets my Stupendous Python Teacher Award. @jakevp <https://pycon.blogspot.com/2020/03/march-2-update-on-covid-19.html>

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