Mailman 3 May 2022 - 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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Fwd: Data Structure and Algorithms in Python: May 29: After Class Review
by kirby urner May 30, 2022

May 30, 2022

I share these emails to my students from time to time, to document the progress of an 8th grade online class. The Notebook I was working on today. https://github.com/4dsolutions/elite_school/blob/master/TheCabal.ipynb -- Kirby ========== From: Sunshine Elite Education Date: Sun, May 29, 2022 at 7:39 PM Subject: Data Structure and Algorithms in Python: May 29: After Class Review Greetings all -- Tonight's talk was about how those intricate little patches of symbols, in math books, are pretty much algorithms, but in a pre-computer language. We use letters for numbers because the recipes are for a whole variety of inputs. The gears turn, and we get our computed outputs. That's been going on since long before electronic computers. My opening example involved computing the volume of a tetrahedron, regular or irregular, on the basis of its edge lengths only, of which there are six. I showed the Cayley-Menger algorithm for computing that, which involves taking the "determinant of a matrix" a topic in some high school math curricula (e.g IB, AP) but not all. Python's sympy was able to take that matrix and convert it to a lot of terms under a radical sign (2nd root symbol). Using plane nets, I was able to compute the volume of: * a regular tetrahedron of edges 1 * an "A module" (1/24th of the above) * an "E module" (1/120th of a rhombic triacontahedron) This is shoptalk from a niche geometry I specialize in studying. I was demonstrating how I make use of the same tools I'm teaching, when doing my own geometry research. Python and mathematics weave together in Jupyter Notebooks to give you symbolic operations with sympy, plotting capability (graphing) with matplotlib, and tabular data (pandas -- coming up). During the 2nd half of the talk, we dove deep into Python's capabilities, reviewing the role of __special_names__ ("__ribs__") via the Ornery class <https://replit.com/@kurner/Ornery-Type>, and then diving into @properties, which use @decorator syntax. That magic circle source code we looked at is here: https://github.com/4dsolutions/elite_school/blob/master/magic_circle_v2.py Kirby *Course Name*: Data Structure and Algorithms in Python *Datetime*: 01/29-06/19 Wednesday,Sunday 6:00pm-7:00pm *Location*: Online10 Thanks, Sunshine Elite Education

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Python Certificate
by gabor.guta＠proinbox.com May 21, 2022

May 21, 2022

I have checked out the the Python certification programs and I think it would be interesting to create something more "official" and more open/cheaper. I have found a Polish company which calls itself as Python-Institute (which is a bit misleading name in my opinion as it suggest that it is officially related to some organization of the Python community) and sells tests/certs from approx. fifty to several hundred EUR depending on the level. I have tried the entry level and for me it was disappointing from the perspective of the quality of the questions. I haven't tried Microsoft's certification yet. I think it would be a very viable option to create a certification program which is officially supported by the PSF and provide some reasonable pricing (i.e. free if someone just want do a self assessment and a reasonable price if someone want to take the test in a controlled environment). The scope could be the core language elements. Let me know what you think about the usefulness of the idea.

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documenting the evolution of a 21st century high school course (Silicon Forest)
by kirby urner May 16, 2022

May 16, 2022

An email to students, after Zoom class this evening: ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Sunshine Elite Education Date: Sun, May 15, 2022 at 9:32 PM Subject: Data Structure and Algorithms in Python: May 15: After class (re Quicksort) To: <kirby.urner(a)gmail.com> Thanks for joining me this evening. The famous QuickSort, which I coded live, is here: https://nbviewer.org/github/4dsolutions/elite_school/blob/master/ADS_sandbo… (scroll down) I was somewhat surprised I could get it working without notes. Note: if the goal really is super speed, then C/C++ is a better bet (I showed C++ for Kids, a book). But Python, with its clear high level syntax, is good for communicating the gist of the algorithm. Python itself is written in C (often) so it's internal, native sorting capabilities (e.g. part of L.sort and sorted(L)) are much faster than those like the one I shared, written in Python. In a practical sense, you don't really need to write a sort algorithm in Python as these are already provided to you. The source code for Python is out there, if you get curious about how it sorts stuff internally. Check into how the list type is implemented -- that would be where I'd poke around (I haven't yet). There should be a book out there that's like a guide to Python's C internals. Is there? I don't know. I did some overview of our evolving online textbook, which now has a TOC. Feel free to explore any time, by way of review. In the Graph Theory sandbox, I've added more links to student work. https://github.com/4dsolutions/elite_school/blob/master/ADS_TOC.ipynb Kirby *Course Name*: Data Structure and Algorithms in Python *Datetime*: 01/29-06/19 Wednesday,Sunday 6:00pm-7:00pm *Location*: Online10 Thanks, Sunshine Elite Education --------------------------- --------------------- Web: www.SunshineEliteEducation.com

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exhibit: teacher to students, pre-class email, Silicon Forest May, 2022
by kirby urner May 8, 2022

May 8, 2022

From: Sunshine Elite Education Date: Sun, May 8, 2022 at 12:07 PM Subject: Data Structure and Algorithms in Python: Sunday May 8: Pre Class Prim's Algorithm Greetings guys -- In the old days of purely paper textbooks, adding to them or changing them was hard and only happened from one edition to the next, with maybe years in between. Today, those of us using Jupyter Notebooks within a version control system for textbooks, likely have the ability to update them often. We now think in terms of an electronic textbook that has the ability to change continuously through frequent new "versions" (instread of through relatively infrequent "editions"). Along those lines... At https://github.com/4dsolutions/elite_school I have expanded ADS_sandbox_6.ipynb with new material regarding Prim's algorithm for finding the least costly spanning tree within a graph. Here's a Youtube I cite and include screenshots from: https://youtu.be/Uj47dxYPow8 Prim's Algorithm: Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) 371,043 views Jun 23, 2016 EducateYourself <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC10JldFF3n7mRSGX6QfrQAA> 2.07K subscribers Short example of Prim's Algorithm, graph is from "Cormen" book. Another resource I recently added, a new link from our textbook: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/5-best-books-for-competitive-programming/ Might these be books from your library if you see CP in your future? Are any of them online? Maybe you already have some data structure and algorithms books you would like to recommend and/or share about. I've included a few recommendations of my own e.g. Math Adventures with Python for example. I show a picture of its author, in front of my house. See you at 6 pm. Kirby *Course Name*: Data Structure and Algorithms in Python *Datetime*: 01/29-06/19 Wednesday,Sunday 6:00pm-7:00pm *Location*: Online10 Thanks, Sunshine Elite Education ------------------------------------------------

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