python-tools-for-students

This projects aims to teach students the basics of how to use powerful Python Tools for the day to day life at university:

Solving equations
- Analytically
- Numerically
Handling data
- Reading differently structured plaintext files
- Doing calculations on data
- Fitting of data
- Visualization (plotting)

Why python?

Python is one the fastest growing programming languages, it is easy to learn (i.e. compared to C), is multi purpose (there is pretty much no task that can't be done in python) and it has a rich eco system of libraries for math, physics, engineering, data science and data evaluation in general.

[ XKCD-comic python antigravity ]

Where are we with this project right now?

At the moment we are writing teaching material and gather ideas what to teach and build a useful structure to teach the materials. Which is why this is your chance to tell us what you want to learn. Just open an issue, write about what you want to learn (examples help with explanations) and we can discuss if this should be part of this course or is too much of an edge case. And of course we are also always happy if you want to contribute and teach others the skills you acquired.

What do you need?

A base knowledge in Python

We won't teach you python from the ground up, so you need to already have some basic knowledge about python. For this purpose we recommend that you complete i.e. the SoloLearn Python 3 Tutorial, which is also available as a free mobile app and/or watch the tutorials made by sentdex
A working python installation

The best way to get Python up and running for your OS is to download Anaconda, which is crossplatform and comes with most tools needed prebundled (batteries included).
A github account

The github account is needed so you can write issues and tell us what YOU want to learn, what we should improve or if we did something wrong.

Who are we?

We are a group of master students from TU-Berlin (Germany), who want to share their experience with python tools, which make the day to day life at university (homework, writing reports and evaluating data) easier.

How can YOU help?

Since all contributors are working on this in their spare time, we could use your help and encourage you to contribute to this project as well. This will also give you inside on how to work on a project on github.

What we need:

Correction reader: Since we all are only humans, it might happen that there are spelling errors, so if you see them feel free to correct them.
Creators: Since we are lacking manpower, we would highly appreciate if you would share your knowledge as well and help us giving people the knowledge they need.
Summary writer: Since writing the material itself is very time consuming, we would love for the community to write a summary in the style of a TL;DR, for the material we provide.
Example writer: If you have an example/use case on how to use the knowledge gained here, feel free to share it with everyone and we will review if it fits in the context of this project.

Why in english?

Even so we are a group of german students, the community of english speaking programmers is much bigger than the one of programmers which only speak german. And since most problems you might have, other people already had and solved them, it is of benefit to know the terms we introduce in english, since this gives you access to a bigger knowledge base (google/duckduckgo and stackoverflow are your friends).