/python-course

Introduction to Python for Political Scientists

Primary LanguagePythonMIT LicenseMIT

Introduction to Python for Political Scientists

This repository is the website for the course offered at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford.

The timeline has the schedule and syllabus.

Sponsors

Centre for Technology and Global Affairs (DPIR)

  • Coding for Politics Project

People

Co-convenors: Dr. Lucas Kello, Dr. Radoslaw Zubek

Instructor: Abhishek Dasgupta

Objective

After taking this course, students should be able to write small to medium-scale Python projects that help them in their daily research.

We shall be using Python 3. The course will cover the basics of the Python programming language, followed by guiding the students to develop their own Python application to do web scraping and simple data analysis.

Structure

This is intended to be a 8-week course introducing the basics of Python, with hands-on practical experience for upto 20 students.

Each week will have 2 hour sessions, with 1 hour of lectures and 1 hour of practicals. Students are required to bring their own laptop. Guidance will be provided in the first week to set up their computing environment (e.g. installing Python software).

Text

The primary reference text for the course will be the book Automate the Boring Stuff with Python by Al Sweigart. In addition, the course materials will include lecture slides and handouts.