Integrated Practical: Python in Geosciences

Abstract

Python is a widely used language for data analysis and visualisation, making it an indispensable tool for science and industry. Students will learn to use, adapt and write clean and reusable Python code from a variety of geoscience examples, working in small teams of two or three.

Objective

In this course students will learn to - handle and visualise geoscientific data (geoscientific data formats, maps in python) - work with python on their laptops (installing and managing python, using the web to help themselves) - write quality code (clean coding, documentation, reusable functions) - collaborate on code (joint projects, adapting existing code) - use scripting for reliable and efficient data processing (python)

Content

The first half of the course is dedicated to setting up python on your personal laptop and for an introduction to important data processing and visualization libraries. For the second half, students work on one specific project. For each project, skeleton python code is provided, which the students complete and augment. Ideally, students work in teams of two or three. All projects include some aspects of data handling and visualization, especially geographical maps. At the end of the practica, all projects are presented, along with the challenges that occurred and how they were tackled. As our goal is that students learn to work with python on their own, using their own laptop and the internet for tackling problems is highly encouraged but not mandatory.

Resources