Targeting of workshop based on skill/subject/department?

[bsmith89]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 12:12 PM, Byron Smith wrote:

My thoughts, although everything is open for debate:

I think we should plan on teaching the python-novice-gapminder lesson (as opposed to the "inflammation" lesson which is kind of a default). I imagine you'd take the first morning giving a survey of the important parts of the Python language and working quickly up to manipulating data and plotting with the pandas package. This half is all about giving learners the foundation (of Python and Jupyter) and motivating Python by showing them some simple plotting.

I'd teach the second half of that lesson catching any important topics that we miss on the first day and attempting to work up to using functions effectively and defensive programming / reproducible practices. Alternatively, we could keep the second day flexible and attempt to show them the basics of whatever topics they're interested in (topic nominations on morning no. 1?)

In this plan we'd be advertising mostly for folks who have never used Python before or aren't comfortable with the basics. The gapminder dataset can be generalized to just about any research field which works with tabular data (so all of them?).

Are you instead interested in targeting people with some Python experience? Particular research fields?

Let me know!

[bsmith89]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 1:05 PM, Jackie Z. Cohen wrote:

Great, thank you!

This sounds good to me. Is this intended for folks who have never used Python but have used other computing environments/stats packages such as R, so they have some familiarity with programming concepts? (I assume "research fields that involve tabular data" include researchers who have at least had one or two stats courses, in general?)

I'm happy/interested to teach beginners (that's what I do in my day job :)). I ask ^ because it seems like a lot for those who have no programming experience but perfect for people who have no Python but some programming? I've never taught the SWC Python lessons, though, just read through them (I am comfortable with all the material).

What about introducing your plan for the second day on the first day and asking whether it sounds like it covers people's interests -- knowing what people are focused on as goals for the workshop might help direct the focus of that second day but leave some structure for topics to cover?

I'm open to advertising to any research fields but can come up with some specifics if you like! I think it might be cool to advertise to those who are social scientists at the university / interested in more computational social science work in a new language, which, as you say, is generalizable to pretty much any research field! but also I've admittedly have been a bit behind the times on U-M SWC this semester so whatever you think makes sense for us all is fine with me.

I will take a look at the site and the issues ASAP as well! Thanks for doing all this --

[bsmith89]

I'm open to advertising to any research fields but can come up with some specifics if you like! I think it might be cool to advertise to those who are social scientists at the university / interested in more computational social science work in a new language, which, as you say, is generalizable to pretty much any research field!

Advertising heavily in social science depts. sounds great to me. My own department is EEB, so I would also want to include those folks. I think the workshop can be successful even with a very generic treatment of the data.

This sounds good to me. Is this intended for folks who have never used Python but have used other computing environments/stats packages such as R, so they have some familiarity with programming concepts? I'm happy/interested to teach beginners (that's what I do in my day job :)). I ask ^ because it seems like a lot for those who have no programming experience but perfect for people who have no Python but some programming?

I think it is reasonable to require people to have had experience programming in other languages besides Python, but I'm also happy to include complete beginners. Arguments for one or the other?

(I assume "research fields that involve tabular data" include researchers who have at least had one or two stats courses, in general?)

Yeah, probably. I think we can 'target' these folks by emphasizing that we will teach tools for analyzing data.

What about introducing your plan for the second day on the first day and asking whether it sounds like it covers people's interests -- knowing what people are focused on as goals for the workshop might help direct the focus of that second day but leave some structure for topics to cover?

This sounds great.

[aerenchyma]

Sounds like we are ready on this once we have material to distribute for advertising/when the branding is ready, since we're about 10 days out? I can start emailing anytime. Maybe I will create another issue for this if there is not one already, I shall check.