Python for the Geosciences, a class offered at Texas A&M University in the Oceanography department.
Course Topics, Calendar of Activities, Major Assignment Dates (subject to change)
Homework is typically due every Friday night at midnight
Week 0–2 (Aug 27/29, Sep 3/5/10/12): Course intro; Python basics — Core language
Homework 00 due Aug 30, hw01 due Sep 6, hw02 due Sep 13
Using Jupyter notebooks and JupyterHub. Overview of the standard Python programming language, standard data containers (lists, tuples, dictionaries, etc), importing packages, for/while loops, functions, and object oriented programming (objects as containers for data and associated functions).
Materials:
Week 3–4 (Sep 17/19/24/26): Numerical Python
hw03 due Sep 20, hw04 due Sep 27
Numpy, vector operations, data types, and array broadcasting.
Materials:
Week 5 (Oct 1): Review
hw05 due Oct 4
Review core language and numpy.
Week 5–7 (Oct 3/8/10/15): Basic plotting in Python with matplotlib
hw06 due Oct 11, hw07 due Oct 18, Email project plan by Oct 18
Overview of the matplotlib plotting package: 1D (line plots, histograms), 2D (contours, pcolor).
Materials:
Week 7–9 (Oct 17/22/24/29): 1D time series analysis
hw08 due Oct 25, hw09 due Nov 1
pandas, indexing, averaging.
Materials:
Week 9–10 (Oct 31, Nov 5): Review
hw10 due Nov 8
Review core, numpy, matplotlib, and pandas.
Week 10-12 (Nov 7/12/14/19): 2D geospatial plotting
hw11 due Nov 15
Cartopy mapping package and shapefiles. xarray: reading and writing NetCDF files locally and over the internet.
Materials:
Week 12-13 (Nov 21/26, No class Nov 28): Python beyond the notebook
Anaconda package installer, iPython for terminal window, writing scripts, Jupyterlab; debugging, unit testing.
Materials:
Week 14 (Dec 3): Share projects in groups
hw12/project due Dec 3 (undergrads and grads)
Share projects in groups and get feedback. Attendance is required.