Unit 1 (Introduction)

Section 1

  • Brief history of Python. Using Python as a powerful scientific calculator.
  • Arithmetic operators +, -, *, /, **.
  • Priority (precedence) of arithmetic operators, parentheses.
  • Python libraries, the old and new ways of importing them.
  • Importing the Fractions library and working with fractions.
  • Using the built-in function help().
  • Defining numerical (integer and real) variables and text strings.
  • Importing Numpy and using its functionality.
  • Displaying results with the built-in function print().

Section 2

  • Using the floor division operator //, the modulo operator %, and the power operator **.
  • Using the operator // with negative and real numbers.
  • Scientific notation.
  • Real numbers are not represented exactly in the computer.
  • Using the assignment operator = and the comparison operator ==.
  • Working with the Boolean values True and False.
  • The result of the comparison operator == is either True or False.
  • One should never use the operator == to compare real numbers.
  • Correct way to check if two real numbers are the same.
  • Using the built-in function abs() to calculate the absolute value of numbers.
  • The result of the comparison operators <, >, <=, >=, != is either True or False.
  • How to reach the limit of the finite computer arithmetic on any computer.
  • Using the arithmetic operators +=, -=, *=, /=, //=, %= and **=.
  • Binary vs. unary operators.
  • Working with the most important units of data size including b, KB, MB and GB.
  • The difference between KB and kB.

Section 3

  • Defining and calling functions.
  • Importance of writing docstrings and commenting your code.
  • Function parameters vs. arguments.
  • Standard (positional) vs. named (keyword) arguments.
  • Functions returning multiple values.
  • Global and local scopes, global and local variables.
  • Keyword ‘global’.
  • Functions should never change the values of global variables.
  • Working with tuples, unpacking them, accessing individual items via indices.
  • Parsing tuples one item at a time using the for loop.
  • The range() function. Using nested for loops.

Section 4

  • Creating empty and non-empty lists.
  • Obtaining the length of lists, function len().
  • Adding items to lists, methods append() and insert().
  • Removing items from lists, methods pop() and remove(), keyword del.
  • Adding lists and multiplying them with integers.
  • Mutability of lists.
  • Parsing lists with the for loop.
  • Accessing individual list items via their indices.
  • Using the while loop.
  • Slicing lists, creating copies and reversed copies of lists via slicing.
  • Reversing lists and sorting them, list methods reverse() and sort().
  • Reversing lists and sorting them, built-in functions reversed() and sorted().
  • Making list and tuple items unique.

Section 5

  • Working with Boolean expressions and variables.
  • The if, if-else and if-elif-else statements.
  • Generating random integers and real numbers.
  • Using the keyword ‘in’ to check if a given item is present in a tuple or list.
  • Using the method count() to count occurrences of given items in tuples and lists.
  • Using the method index() to obtain positions of given items in tuples and lists.
  • Working with the Boolean operators and, or, not.
  • Chaining arithmetic comparison operators.
  • Using the break and continue statements in loops.
  • Working with infinite while loops.
  • Command ‘pass’.
  • Using the else branch with for and while loops.
  • Using the math module, and how it compares to Numpy.

 

Unit 2 (Working with Text Strings)

Section 6

  • Defining text strings, using single and double quotes.
  • Problems associated with trailing spaces, function repr().
  • Comparing text strings with the == operator.
  • Optional parameters ‘sep’ and ‘end’ of the built-in function print().
  • Adding text strings and multiplying them with positive integers.
  • Updating text string variables with the operators += and *=.
  • The PEP8 — Style Guide for Python Code.

Section 7

  • Combining single and double quotes in text strings.
  • Obtaining the length of text strings, function len().
  • Working with the special characters \n, \” and \’.
  • Casting numbers to text strings, function str().
  • Inserting numbers into text strings.
  • Casting text strings to numbers, functions int() and float().
  • Using interactive keyboard input.
  • Displaying the type of variables, function type().
  • Checking the type of variables at runtime, function isinstance().
  • Using the text string methods lower(), upper() and title().
  • Text string methods never change the original text string.
  • Cleaning text strings with the methods rstrip(), lstrip() and strip().
  • Splitting a text string into a list of words, method split().
  • Checking for substrings, keyword ‘in’.
  • Making a text search case-insensitive.
  • Counting the occurrences of substrings in text strings, method count().

Section 8

  • Working with the ASCII table, functions ord() and chr().
  • Searching for and replacing substrings in text strings, method replace().
  • Zipping two lists and using the for loop to parse them at the same time.
  • Erasing parts of text strings.
  • Cleaning text strings from unwanted characters.
  • Swapping the contents of two text strings.
  • Swapping two substrings in a text string.
  • Working with useful text string methods such as isalpha(), isalnum(), isdigit() etc.

Section 9

  • Text strings are immutable objects in Python.
  • Obtaining the memory address of Python objects, function id().
  • Accessing individual characters in text strings via their indices.
  • Slicing text strings and reversing them.
  • Retrieving and working with system date and time.
  • Obtaining the position of a substring in a given text string, method index().
  • Counting the occurrences of a substring in a given text string, method count().
  • Translating decimal numbers into binary format, function bin().
  • Understanding how text strings are represented in computer memory.
  • Comparing text strings using the operators <, <=, >, >=.
  • Creating text characters which are not present on the keyboard.

Section 10

  • What are regular expressions and what are they useful for.
  • Python’s regular expressions module ‘re’.
  • Using the functions search(), match() and findall().
  • Greedy and non-greedy repeating patterns.
  • Using character classes and groups of characters.
  • Working with the most important metacharacters and special sequences.
  • Mining unknown file names and email addresses from text data.

 

Unit 3 (Plotting, Drawing, and Software Design)

Section 11

  • Importing the Matplotlib and Numpy libraries and abbreviating their names.
  • Defining lines and polylines using X and Y arrays.
  • Plotting polylines, function plot().
  • Assigning colors to objects.
  • Displaying plots, function show().
  • Displaying two or more objects simultaneously.
  • Making both axes equally-scaled with axis(“equal”).
  • Hiding axes with axis(“off”).
  • Filling closed areas with color, function fill().
  • Changing the width of lines via the optional keyword argument ‘linewidth’.
  • Interrupting polylines with the keyword ‘None’.
  • Reversing the orientation of polylines, and drawing hollow objects.

Section 12

  • Using the Numpy function linspace() to create equidistant grids.
  • Using arrays created with linspace() in calculations.
  • Plotting graphs of functions with a linspace() array as the X variable.
  • Drawing circles centered at (Cx, Cy), formula x = Cx + R*cos(t), y = Cy + R*sin(t).
  • Drawing regular polygons by reducing the number of edges of the circle.
  • Drawing circular arcs.
  • Drawing ellipses, formula x = Cx + Rx*cos(t), y = Cy + Ry*sin(t).
  • Drawing spirals, formula x = Cx + t*cos(t), y = Cx + t*sin(t).
  • Casting numpy.ndarray to a list and alter it when needed.

Section 13

  • Working with 2D arrays using nested for loops.
  • Using matrix-style indices for items in 2D arrays.
  • Defining and using functions with default parameter values.
  • Setting X and Y axis ranges and adding titles to Matplotlib plots.
  • Accessing items in linspace() arrays via their indices.

Section 14

  • Why is it important to plan a software very carefully before starting to code.
  • API = Application Programming Interface.
  • Why should internal data structures never be exposed to the user.
  • Designing an API to sustain internal software changes.
  • Coding numerous basic shapes including lines, polylines, squares, triangles, quads, rectangles, polygons, circles, arcs, and rings.
  • Working with three types of list comprehension.
  • Creating empty drawings and adding shapes to them.
  • Rotating, moving and scaling shapes, merging them, and reversing their orientation.

Section 15

  • Why good software should be organized like an army.
  • Why the Graphics Editor should provide functions to work with drawings as opposed to working with individual shapes.
  • Using list comprehension to move, rotate and scale objects.
  • How to NOT duplicate lists.
  • Shallow copy and a deep copying.
  • The meaning of a “wrapper”.

Unit 4 (Files, Data, and Visualization)

Section 16

  • Making programs interactive, function input().
  • The old and new ways to open a file.
  • Opening a text file for reading with the with statement.
  • Parsing a text file line-by-line using the for loop.
  • Cleaning text strings with strip(), lstrip() and rstrip().
  • Counting lines, words and characters in a text file.
  • Working with the file pointer, methods read(), seek() and tell().
  • Rewinding a file and when this can be useful.
  • Reading selected lines, method readline().
  • Working with sets, understanding the differences between sets and lists.
  • Creating empty and non-empty sets.
  • Adding elements to sets and removing elements.
  • Checking the number of items in a set.
  • Checking for the presence of an item in a set.
  • Checking for subsets and supersets.
  • Creating set unions, intersections, and differences.
  • Using sets to extract unique words from a text file.
  • Using sets to remove duplicate items from lists.

Section 17

  • ARPANET, the first version of the Internet, and ASCII art.
  • Opening a text file for writing and writing text strings to it.
  • Using the file flags ‘w+’, ‘r+’ and ‘a+’.
  • Potential risks related to writing to a text file.
  • Catching IOError exceptions, the try-except statement.
  • Other types of exceptions in Python, and where to find a complete list.
  • The full try-except-else-finally statement.
  • Extracting all lines from a text file at once as a list of text strings.
  • Writing a list of text strings to a text file at once.
  • Reading the whole text file into a text string.
  • The importance of always checking user data.
  • Using assertions and exceptions.
  • Escaping the backslash character ‘\’ as ‘\\’.

Section 18

  • Bitmap (raster) and vector images.
  • PBM (portable bitmap), PGM (portable grey map) and PPM (portable pixmap) images and why they are useful.
  • The structure of PBM, PGM and PPM image files.
  • Leaving out comments while reading a text file.
  • Reading a sequence of numbers from a file and converting it into a 2D array.
  • Working with 2D and 3D Numpy arrays, nested loops and indices.
  • Writing image files to disk.
  • Uploading custom image and data files to NCLab.
  • Creating image viewers for PBM, PGM and PPM images based on 2D and 3D Numpy arrays.

Section 19

  • Creating empty and non-empty dictionaries.
  • Dictionaries are formed by key:value pairs.
  • Keys are unique but values can be repeated.
  • Adding and removing items, accessing values using keys.
  • Parsing a dictionary using a for loop.
  • Extracting the lists of keys, values, and items.
  • Zipping the lists of keys and values to create a dictionary.
  • Reversing a dictionary using comprehension.
  • Combining dictionaries and finding keys which correspond to repeated values.
  • The mutability of the dictionary object in Python.
  • Using **kwargs to intercept keyword arguments as a dictionary.
  • Transforming the dictionary kwargs into standard variables.
  • Using *args to intercept standard (positional) arguments as a tuple.

Section 20

  • Visualizing data obtained from measurements and computations.
  • Using CSV and other data formats.
  • Using Numpy, Matplotlib, and the Matplotlib’s mplot3d toolkit.
  • Displaying measurement data using graphs and bar charts.
  • Displaying percentages using pie charts.
  • Displaying graphs of functions of two variables.
  • Displaying 2D measurement data on structured grids using wireframe plots, surface plots, contour plots, and color maps.
  • Displaying scientific data computed on unstructured triangular grids.
  • Displaying 2D data represented as 2D Numpy arrays.
  • Visualizing MRI data of the human brain.