The COM6018 module book

This book contains the course material for COM6018, “Data Science with Python”, taught at the University of Sheffield.

The book is split into four parts with an overview displayed on the left.

Note

This book will be updated on a weekly basis. Materials for the week ahead will be released on the Saturday or Sunday before the week starts.

1. Lectures

These are the slides that are presented in the weekly lecture sessions. The slides will open in the browser. To return to this book overview page you can simply use the back button in your browser.

2. Course Notes

This is the core module material. Each chapter is a week of the course and the chapters have been designed to build slowly and logically. This material will be overviewed in the lectures and then explored in more detail in the labs. It is recommended that you review weeks materials at the start of the week so that you are prepared for the lectures and labs. The notes are generated from Jupyter notebooks. If you wish to run the code examples in them yourself, you can download the source .ipynb file using that download button that will appear at the top of the page.

3. Lab Classes

This is the material that will be covered in the lab classes. The lab classes are designed to be interactive and to give you the opportunity to practice the skills you have learnt in the lectures. Each lab class is a Jupyter notebook which presents a series of problems. The notebooks have empty cells where you can develop your solutions and, there are often, ‘test cells’ that you can run to check that your solutions are correct. Some of the harder problems have hints to help you if you get stuck but you will also find yourself needing to refer to the course notes. Lab classes will be staffed so if you are stuck you will be able to ask a lab tutor for help. We also encourage you to work together with a classmate to solve the problems.

4. Solutions

These are a copy of the lab classes but also showing solutions to the problems. These will be released the day after the corresponding lab class. If you miss a lab class, it is recommended that you attempt the lab classes in your own time before looking at the solutions. For many of the problems there are many equally valid solutions, and the solutions notebook is only showing one. So if your code worked but is different from the solution, don’t worry! You may want to compare your solution to the one in the solutions notebook and think about which is clearer, and which is more efficient. We are very happy to receive feedback on the solutions, so if you think you have a better solution, please let us know! The module Blackboard page has a discussion board where you can post questions and discuss the problems with your classmates.