Mailman 3 July 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 … [View More]

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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 … [View More]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 [View Less]

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MineCraft with Python
by Jurgis Pralgauskis Dec. 3, 2022

Dec. 3, 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, … [View More]

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answer on Quora re common misconceptions re Python
by kirby urner July 21, 2022

July 21, 2022

I've written a ton of answers on Quora over the years. This latest answer links to our edu-sig home page and talks about Python in education. https://qr.ae/pvkQkA Kirby

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reviewing PY4HS (Python for High School) pedagogy / andragogy
by kirby urner July 12, 2022

July 12, 2022

The pedagogy I'm showcasing below follows my theme of "classes first" and/or "classes early" i.e. we can capitalize on the object oriented perspective encapsulating how we think in human terms, about objects (known as "things" in the vernacular (joke)). Granted some my find the object oriented perspective an wrong place to start, but this is edu-sig(a)python.org after all. We start with animals, because of their obvious appeal and familiarity, introduce special names, move to operator … [View More]overloading in particular, and from there to a well-known number type already encountered pre high school: the rational number, aka fraction. Back in the early days of edu-sig, I'd promulgate this curriculum sans Python yet having a Fraction type in the Standard Library. That didn't take long to materialize. Nowadays there's no practical reason to code a Rat (rational number) if the goal is just to get on with coding. However if the goal is to learn coding itself, i.e. the grammar of Python, while reviewing basic arithmetic, then almost nothing could be more instructive. A Fraction type is exactly what Python is good at letting us construct, thanks to all those __ribs__ (as I call them). Thanks to Wes for suggesting a povray might be conda installed from conda-forge or one of those. That certainly would be preferable to a homebrew solution on Mac I would hazard, if we're using conda anyway. However I haven't checked it out yet myself. The class in question is within the hour. I won't keep posting every segment as with these last several posts I'll have established the URLs / Repos through which followup is always possible. Presumably these recent posts have established the trajectory. I'm always on the lookout for more early adopters if you want to contact me directly. Let's exchange some ideas. Kirby ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Sunshine Elite Education <info(a)sunshineeliteeducation.com> Date: Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 2:47 PM Subject: Python III: Python Programming and Data Structure for High School : July 12: Before Class To: <kirby.urner(a)gmail.com> Cc: <info(a)sunshineeliteeducation.com> Greetings everyone, from your instructor for Py4HS (Python for High School) -- a nickname. https://github.com/4dsolutions/elite_school/blob/master/Py4HS_July_12_2022.… is the Notebook I've been working on as a starting place for today's session. I want to review what we've been doing in Python, when it comes to making types (like types of animals), and connect that forward to a Rational Number type written purely in Python. A good review of fractions, a topic taken up even before high school. Then Fibonacci Numbers. You will find these topics in the overview page, the one where I preview a lot of stuff. For example, under Polynomial, you will find reference to a Greek letter number (math has lots of those) I introduce in today's Notebook. In other words, our topics connect together in many ways, just like towns on a map may have many roads connecting them in a network (a network is what we also call a "graph"). We learn the territory by exploring it. Python becomes one of our tools for exploring mathematics. Plus we also enjoy exploring Python, an interesting language by Guido van Rossum and friends. Kirby *Course Name*: Python III: Python Programming and Data Structure for High School *Datetime*: 07/05-08/26 Tuesday,Friday 4:30pm-6:00pm *Location*: Online13 Thanks, Sunshine Elite Education -------------------------------- ---------------- Web: www.SunshineEliteEducation.com [View Less]

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Archive Copy: High School with Jupyter Notebooks (Silicon Forest)
by kirby urner July 6, 2022

July 6, 2022

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Sunshine Elite Education <info(a)sunshineeliteeducation.com> Date: Tue, Jul 5, 2022 at 6:47 PM Subject: Python III: Python Programming and Data Structure for High School : July 5: after class To: <kirby.urner(a)gmail.com> Cc: <info(a)sunshineeliteeducation.com> Greetings students -- This is in followup to our first meetup, which just ended. I'll often make some notes in followup, to remind you of what we've covered and to … [View More]provide some bookmarks for your web browser. The tools I focused on: Jupyter Notebook -- used with languages such as Julia, Python and R Jupyter Lab -- for working with Notebooks POV-Ray -- Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer Python -- the language itself, by Guido van Rossum, the Dutchman Some Python types and math concepts we previewed (we'll be coming back to all this stuff, I was just trying to give examples of high school math topics we'll be looking at): * sets <https://realpython.com/python-sets/>: no duplicates, no left to right order (we looked at some Emoji as elements) * number bases (other than 10) -- more next time * Pascal's Triangl e <http://4dsolutions.net/ocn/numeracy0.html> * number sequences: figurate (e.g. triangular) and polyhedral (e.g. tetrahedral) https://oeis.org/A000217 (tetrahedral -- found in Pascal's Triangle) https://oeis.org/A005901 (cuboctahedral) * "Mod" type: numbers that add and multiply "modulo" something (5 mod 12) x (5 mod 12) = 25 mod 12 = 1 mod 12) -- wasn't that much a high school topic years ago but then along came cryptography as an everyday feature of the internet * "Rat" type: rational numbers i.e. fractions (1/2 + 1/3 = 5/6) * Polynomials (I didn't say much about them) * Plotting (meaning "graphs" -- another form of visual output, much easier to get than with POV-Ray). The Mod and Rat types demonstrate Python's use of "special names" which look like __this__ i.e. two underlines on either side of some word. I call them __ribs__ because they look a bit like snake ribs <https://www.google.com/search?q=snake+ribs&source=lnms&tbm=isch>. That's a "mnemonic device" (a way to help you remember). For the most part I scrolled through this Jupyter Notebook top to bottom: https://github.com/4dsolutions/elite_school/blob/master/ADS_highschool_math… = = = Where to get JupyterLab etc? https://www.anaconda.com/products/distribution Where to get POV-Ray: http://www.povray.org/download/ (Windows) http://megapov.inetart.net/download.html#Mac (Mac and Linux) You may need to get some help with installation, especially if you want POV-Ray on Mac or Linux. Do you know some techies? My email address is kirby.urner(a)gmail.com I'll be talking in more detail about installation issues on Friday. We'll also be looking at using Notebooks in the cloud (e.g. through colab.research.google.com). But eventually I hope you'll be comfortable using JupyterLab as a working local environment (with POV-Ray an optional nice-to-have). JupyterLab includes access to both Notebooks and Python, as well as to a Terminal (console) window. Kirby *Course Name*: Python III: Python Programming and Data Structure for High School *Datetime*: 07/05-08/26 Tuesday,Friday 4:30pm-6:00pm *Location*: Online13 Thanks, Sunshine Elite Education ------------------------------------------------ Tel: (503)915-2956 Address: 15320 NW Central Dr. Ste D6, Portland, OR 97229 Web: www.SunshineEliteEducation.com [View Less]

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