The tutorial relies on IPython Notebooks which are targeted for running on Google's Colaboratory Platform. This platform gives the user a virtual machine in which to run python codes including machine learning codes. The VM comes with a preinstalled environment that includes most of what is needed for these tutorials.

Before You Arrive

Do the following before you come to the tutorial:

  • You need a Google Account to use Colaboratory
  • Goto Google's Colaboratory Platform
  • You should see this page start_page
  • Click on the New Python Notebook
  • Now you will see a new notebook where you can type in python code. clean_page
  • After you enter code, type <shift>+<enter> to execute the code cell.
  • A full introduction to the notebook environment is out of scope for this tutorial, but many can be found with a simple google search
  • We will be using notebooks from this repository during the tutorial, so you should be familiar with how to import them into Colaboratory
  • Now you can open the File menu at the top left and select Open Notebook which will open a dialogue box.
  • Select the GitHub tab in the dialogue box.
  • From here you can enter the url for the github repo: https://github.com/argonne-lcf/ATPESC_MachineLearning and hit <enter>. open_github
  • This will show you a list of the Notebooks available in the repo.
  • Select the introduction.ipynb file to open and work through it.
  • As each session of the tutorial begins, you will simply select the corresponding notebook from this list and it will create a copy for you in your Colaboratory account (all *.ipynb files in the Colaboratory account will be stored in your Google Drive).
  • To use a GPU, in the notbook the select Runtime -> Change Runtime Type and you have a dropbox list of hardward settings to choose from where the notebook can run.