[python-uk] Python data wrangling - my experience of last year's Southampton course

[Michael Grazebrook]

Hi

Lasy year, Southampton Uni started a new summer school. It's mostly about using Python to explore, process and visualise data. Since the second summer school is now open for registration, it seems like

a good time to share my experience of attending it.
<http://ngcm.soton.ac.uk/summer-academy/>


It's mainly aimed at PhD students of various disciplines. But anyone can attend.

I attended the courses on IPython Notebook (Jupyter) and Pandas. There are about 8 courses running in parallel, so hard choices. Some of the courses are taught by authors of the packages.

The Pandas course was challenging. In a PhD level class, trying to learn Pandas, numpy, Scipy and Seaborn in 2 days, mastering every detail was beyond me. I couldn't use it without looking stuff up. But I know what it can do and where to start. It was good enough to put the new knowledge to work for my client when I got back to work.

With the IPython course, I left feeling competent.

The fee is reasonable - less than a training company but without the mollycoddling and a larger class size (30 ish?). Then again, being able to set up a fresh development environment is a useful thing to know. There was plenty of support if one got stuck (Though set-up is best done before the week begins).

For me, there was also quite a bit to learn beyond the syllabus. Discovering about what the students were researching was an an added bonus. That works both ways as several people were interested in my experience of the world of work. It introduced me to some tools I hadn't known about before such as slack and etherpad.

Add to that the pleasure of revisiting student life and I had an excellent week. Maybe this would interest you too.


Michael Grazebrook
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