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A Data Carpentry Workshop

University of Western Australia

Oct 25-26, 2016

9:00 am - 4:30 pm

Instructors: Alistair Walsh, Philipp Bayer

Helpers: Andrea Bedini, Rebecca Lange, Michael Vacher, Tim Stuart

This workshop is brought to you by:

UWA

COMBINE

Sponsors:

AGTA     VLSCI

General Information

Data Carpentry workshops are for any researcher who has data they want to analyze, and no prior computational experience is required. This hands-on workshop teaches basic concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with data.

We will cover Data organization in spreadsheets and OpenRefine, Introduction to Python, Data analysis and visualization in Python and SQL for data management. Participants should bring their laptops and plan to participate actively. By the end of the workshop learners should be able to more effectively manage and analyze data and be able to apply the tools and approaches directly to their ongoing research.

Who: The course is aimed at graduate students, librarians, and researchers.

Where: Learning Suite, Ground Floor Reid Library, UWA. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating sytem (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below). They are also required to abide by Data Carpentry's Code of Conduct.

Contact: Please mail philipp.bayer@uwa.edu.au for more information.

Registration: The workshop is booked out! There will be a Software Carpentry workshop at Curtin University 7-10 November, you can register here!


Preliminary Schedule

Surveys

Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.

Pre-workshop Survey

Post-workshop Survey

Day 1

9:00 Data organization in spreadsheets and Open refine
10:30 Coffee
12:00 Lunch break
13:00 Python basics
14:30 Coffee
17:00 Wrap-up

Day 2

09:00 Data analysis and visualization in Python
10:30 Coffee
12:00 Lunch break
13:00 Data management with SQL
14:30 Coffee
17:00 Wrap-up

Etherpad: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/2015-10-25-uwa.
We will use this Etherpad for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.


Syllabus

Cleaning data in OpenRefine

  • Working with spreadsheets
  • Cleaning and filtering messy data
  • Normalising messy data
  • Basic scripting

Programming in Python

  • Using libraries
  • Working with arrays
  • Reading and plotting data
  • Creating and using functions
  • Loops and conditionals
  • Defensive programming
  • Using Python from the command line

Managing Data with SQL

  • Reading and sorting data
  • Filtering with where
  • Calculating new values on the fly
  • Handling missing values
  • Combining values using aggregation
  • Combining information from multiple tables using join
  • Creating, modifying, and deleting data
  • Programming with databases

Setup

To participate in a Data Carpentry workshop, you will need working copies of the described software. Please make sure to install everything (or at least to download the installers) before the start of your workshop. Participants should bring and use their own laptops to insure the proper setup of tools for an efficient workflow once you leave the workshop.

Please follow these Setup Instructions.

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.