Python for Everybody Specialization
Python Data Structures
This course will introduce the core data structures of the Python programming language. We will move past the basics of procedural programming and explore how we can use the Python built-in data structures such as lists, dictionaries, and tuples to perform increasingly complex data analysis. This course will cover Chapters 6-10 of the textbook “Python for Informatics”. This course is equivalent to the second half of the 11-week "Programming for Everybody (Python)" course.
Using Python to Access Web Data
This course will show how one can treat the Internet as a source of data. We will scrape, parse, and read web data as well as access data using web APIs. We will work with HTML, XML, and JSON data formats in Python. This course will cover Chapters 11-13 of the textbook “Python for Informatics”.
Using Databases with Python
This course will introduce students to the basics of the Structured Query Language (SQL) as well as basic database design for storing data as part of a multi-step data gathering, analysis, and processing effort. The course will use SQLite3 as its database. We will also build web crawlers and multi-step data gathering and visualization processes. We will use the D3.js library to do basic data visualization. This course will cover Chapters 14-15 of the book “Python for Informatics”.
Capstone: Retrieving, Processing, and Visualizing Data with Python
In the capstone, students will build a series of applications to retrieve, process and visualize data using Python. The projects will involve all the elements of the specialization. In the first part of the capstone, students will do the same visualizations to become familiar with the technologies in use (Excel, and D3.js) and then will pursue their own project to visualize some other data that they have or can find. Chapter 15 from the book “Python for Informatics” will serve as the backbone for the capstone.