jelletreep
commented
1 year ago - it would be good to take a moment to go over the schedule and let participants know what to expect and then explicitly state we are going to cover so-and-so module now
- we should also take a little more time to distinguish between the book and exercises notebook and the empty notebook etc. what is the purpose of each etc. I was confused for a while until i realized I should code along.
- we should take some time for people to finish the exercises, and go over the exercises and explain them
- Maybe take some more time at the very start of 2 to explain what variables and data types are. Both ease people into their first experience with Python and explain the first concepts in full. E.g. now at some point the term 'float' came around without a real explanation. Not sure if everyone knows what a float is.
- Be careful not to reference more advanced concepts too often in the introductory chapters (e.g. 'masks', etc.). This may be confusing.
- it would also be good to ensure impatient students like me and Dorien don't (often) end up not listening to the demo and trying only the exercises and then maybe ending up with questions for things that were already explained 😅
- we do not need to match the book exactly when teaching, but at least follow the general line, so people can refer back and recognize what was taught.
- I think we should avoid using list comprehensions and other concepts (classes, methods) that we in general do not want to teach in this course.
- Usefull to remember for when anyone (used to Rstudio) asks about the variables that have been defined in the 'environment': Python has the locals() function, which shows you a dictionary of all defined variables (also things that you do not really want to see, like name etc.). IPython (and thereby Jupyter Notebooks as well) provide some magic commands: %who gives you the names of all user-defined variables %whos gives you a table of user-defined variables, like so:
- Try to avoid rare exceptions and edge cases (e.g. True > False). These concepts cause confusion and require explanation that cost precious time