The goal of this week is to become comfortable hacking at code.
This includes learning about basic packages, how to use them, how to
search for help, basic debugging, and reading/interpreting code.
The course will also begin to introduce some of the more advanced
functionality available in Python, especially concerning array
operations/manipulations. The ultimate goal of this course is to leave
you in a better position to utilize basic packages such as numpy and
matplotlib as well as how to better learn what to look for when trying
to use/understand code.
The idea in this course is not to systematically hit all these points with basic exercises, but instead to cover them more or less organically while starting to do some real science. This provides motivation for introducing new concepts while also situating them in useful contexts (which hopefully is more fun!).
The main project this week is to simulate photometric and spectroscopic observations of a galaxy. The associated exercises for each portion are self-contained in their respective iPython Notebooks and shouldn't require any major outside dependencies.