Integrated Practical: Python in Geosciences

Abstract

Data analysis is indispensable for a wide range of tasks in science and industries. Python is a wide spread language for these and other tasks. The students learn to use, adapt, and write clean and re-usable python code tailored to their specific needs at different examples from geoscience, collaborating in small teams of two to three people. They present their solution at the end of the course.

Objective

In this course, students will learn to: • handle and visualize geoscience data (geoscience specific data formats, maps in python) • work with python on their laptops (install and manage python, use web to help yourself) • write quality code (clean coding, documentation, reusable functions) • collaborate on code (joint projects, adaptation of existing code, git / code versioning) • use scripting for reliable and efficient data processing (python, shell)

Content

Students work on one concrete project for the duration of the practica. A selection of projects is offered. For each project, skeleton python code is provided, which the students complete and augment. Ideally, students work in teams of two or three to familiarize themselves with how joint code development projects work. This includes aspects like clean and documented code or the use of versioning software and repositories like git. All projects include some graphics component, and especially geographical maps, as visualizing data is of key relevance for understanding and communicating. Apart from that, different projects will come from different practical applications and thus highlight different aspects of python. At the end of the practica, all projects will be 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. Compute resources and assistance are provided. No script is provided.

Resources