Data Carpentry: Western University, PAB 150

General Information

Data Carpentry workshops are for any researcher who has data they want to analyze, and no prior computational experience is required. This hands-on workshop teaches basic concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with data.

We will cover Data Analysis and Visualization in Python (part 1), Data Analysis and Visualization in Python (part 2), Data analysis in R and Data visualization in R. Participants should bring their laptops and plan to participate actively. By the end of the workshop learners should be able to more effectively manage and analyze data and be able to apply the tools and approaches directly to their ongoing research.

Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers.

Where: Room 150, Physics & Astronomy Building, University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond St, London, ON N6A 3K7. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating sytem (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below). They are also required to abide by Data Carpentry's Code of Conduct.

Contact: Please mail jnandez@sharcnet.ca for more information.

Preliminary Schedule

Day 1

Arrival	Pre-workshop Survey
09:00	Orientation and test installation
09:30	Short intro to Python
10:00	Starting with Data
10:30	Coffee break
10:45	Starting with Data (cont'd)
11:15	Indexing, slicing, subsetting Dataframes
12:00	Lunch break
13:00	Data types and formats
13:20	Combining dataframes with Pandas
13:50	Data workflows and automation
14:30	Coffee break
14:45	Data workflows and automation (cont'd)
15:20	Plotting your data
16:15	Wrap-up

Day 2

09:30	Before we start
10:00	Introduction to R
10:15	Coffee break
10:30	Introduction to R (cont'd)
11:15	Starting with Data
12:00	Lunch break
13:00	Introducing data.frame
14:00	Aggregating and analyzing data
14:30	Coffee break
14:45	Aggregating and analyzing data (cont'd)
15:30	Data visualisation
16:15	Wrap-up
Dismissal	Post-workshop Survey

Etherpad: http://pad.software-carpentry.org/2016-10-22-uwo.
We will use this Etherpad for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.

Setup

To participate in a Data Carpentry workshop, you will need working copies of the software described below. Please make sure to install everything and try opening it to make sure it works before the start of your workshop. If you run into any problems, please feel free to email the instructor or arrive early to your workshop on the first day. Participants should bring and use their own laptops to insure the proper setup of tools for an efficient workflow once you leave the workshop.

This workshop will be using the software outlined in the install instructions below. Please see the section for your operating system for those directions.

Windows
Mac
Linux

Windows

Please go through all the installation steps below and make sure that you not only installed them, but start them up to make sure they're working. If you have any problems, don't hesitate to email the instructors to ask for help, or arrive early on the first day of the workshop to get help.

R
In the workshop, we will use RStudio. RStudio is a nice interface to the programming language R. To use RStudio, you need to install both R and RStudio.
- Download R from here
- Run the .exe file that was just downloaded
- Go to the RStudio Download page
- Under Installers select RStudio 0.98.1103 - Windows XP/Vista/7/8
- Double click the file to install it
- Once it's installed, open RStudio to make sure it works and you don't get any error messages.
Python
Python is a popular language for scientific computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. Installing all of its scientific packages individually can be a bit difficult, so we recommend Anaconda, an all-in-one installer. Regardless of how you choose to install it, please make sure you install Python version 3.x (e.g., 3.4 is fine). We will teach Python using the jupyter notebook, a programming environment that runs in a web browser. For this to work you will need a reasonably up-to-date browser. The current versions of the Chrome, Safari and Firefox browsers are all supported (some older browsers, including Internet Explorer version 9 and below, are not).
- Download and install Anaconda.
- Download the default Python 3 installer. Use all of the defaults for installation except make sure to check Make Anaconda the default Python.

Mac

R
In the workshop, we will use RStudio. RStudio is a nice interface to the programming language R. To use RStudio, you need to install both R and RStudio.
- Go to CRAN and click on Download R for (Mac) OS X
- Select the .pkg file for the version of OS X that you have and the file will download.
- Double click on the file that was downloaded and R will install
- Go to the RStudio Download page
- Under Installers select RStudio x.yy.zzz - Mac OS X 10.6+ (64-bit) to download it.
- Once it's downloaded, double click the file to install it
- Once it's installed, open RStudio to make sure it works and you don't get any error messages.
Python
- Open Acaconda with your web browser.
- Download the Python 3 installer for OS X.
- Install Python 3 using all of the defaults for installation.

Linux

R
In the workshop, we will use RStudio. RStudio is a nice interface to the programming language R. To use RStudio, you need to install both R and RStudio.
- Follow the instructions for your distribution from CRAN. For most distributions, you can use your package manager (e.g. for Debian/Ubuntu run sudo apt-get install r-base, and for Fedora run sudo yum install R) but make sure that you have at least R 3.2.2 (as pre-packaged versions might be out of date).
- To install RStudio, go to the RStudio Download page
- Under Installers select the version for your distribution.
- Once it's downloaded, double click the file to install it (or sudo dpkg -i rstudio-x.yy.zzz-amd64.deb at the terminal).
- Once it's installed, open RStudio to make sure it works and you don't get any error messages.
Python
- Open Anaconda with your web browser.
- Download the Python 3 installer for Linux.
- Install Python 3 using all of the defaults for installation. (Installation requires using the shell. If you aren't comfortable doing the installation yourself stop here and request help at the workshop.) Open a terminal window. Type
```
bash Anaconda3-
```
  and then press tab. The name of the file you just downloaded should appear. Press enter. You will follow the text-only prompts. When there is a colon at the bottom of the screen press the down arrow to move down through the text. Type yes and press enter to approve the license. Press enter to approve the default location for the files. Type yes and press enter to prepend Anaconda to your PATH (this makes the Anaconda distribution the default Python).

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.

A Data Carpentry Workshop

Western University, PAB 150