About the Course
INF 605 Introduction to Programming - Python develops computational thinking while using Python as a tool to answer real-world questions with data. Students will gain experience exploring messy datasets, cleaning and preparing data, writing programs to automate analysis, and crafting compelling visualizations that communicate insights to both technical and non-technical audiences. The class emphasizes iterative design, statistical thinking, and the ethical implications of computing with practical applications in data science and analytics.
Course Schedule
Course Materials
Available Lectures
| Lecture | Topic | Materials |
|---|---|---|
| -- | Course Introduction and Overview | Syllabus review, course expectations |
| 1 | Introduction to Programming - Python | Notebook Google Drive |
| 2 | Decision Making in Python | Notebook Google Drive |
| 3 | Lists Fundamentals | Notebook Google Drive |
| 4 | While Loops | Notebook Google Drive |
| 5 | For Loops and range() | Notebook Google Drive |
| 6 | Loop Control and Algorithms | Notebook Google Drive |
| 7 | List Comprehensions | Notebook Google Drive |
| 8 | Functions and Modules | Notebook Google Drive |
| 9 | Exception Handling and Advanced List Operations | Notebook Google Drive |
| 10 | Data Structures - Tuples, Dictionaries, and Sets | Notebook Google Drive |
| 11 | Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming | Notebook Google Drive |
| 12 | Advanced OOP - Inheritance and Polymorphism | Notebook Google Drive |
| 13 | String Operations | Notebook Google Drive |
| 14 | File Processing and Data Formats | Notebook Google Drive |
| 15 | Advanced Data Processing - JSON, Excel, and NumPy Introduction | Notebook Google Drive |
| 16 | NumPy Arrays and Vectorized Computing | Notebook Google Drive |
| -- | Midterm Exam (Take Home) | Materials available during exam week |
| 17 | Advanced NumPy Operations | Notebook Google Drive |
| 18 | NumPy Data Manipulation | Notebook Google Drive |
| 19 | pandas Fundamentals Part 1 - Series | Notebook Google Drive |
| 20 | pandas Fundamentals Part 2 - DataFrames | Notebook Google Drive |
| 21 | Data Cleaning Fundamentals with pandas | Notebook Google Drive |
| 22 | Data Preparation and Transformation with pandas | Notebook Google Drive |
| 23 | Data Visualization Fundamentals with Matplotlib | Notebook Google Drive |
| 24 | Advanced Data Visualization with Seaborn | Notebook Google Drive |
| 25 | Final Examination | Notebook Google Drive |
| -- | Final Project Work Session | Project work time |
| -- | Final Project Presentations | Presentation schedule TBA |
Assignments
Programming Assignments
| Assignment | Topic | Due Date | Materials |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Meta Internship Programming Challenge - Python Fundamentals | Sun, Feb 15 | Assignment Notebook Google Drive Submit |
| 2 | Campus Life Programming Challenge - Advanced Python Concepts | Sun, Mar 8 | Assignment Notebook Google Drive Submit |
| 3 | University IT Internship - Student Records System (OOP, Inheritance, File I/O) | Sun, Mar 29 | Assignment Notebook Google Drive Submit |
| 4 | Sports Analytics Internship - Advanced NumPy Data Analysis | Sun, Apr 12 | Assignment Notebook Google Drive Submit |
| 5 | E-Commerce Customer Analytics with pandas | Sun, Apr 26 | Assignment Notebook Google Drive Submit |
| 6 | Data Visualization with Matplotlib and Seaborn | Sun, May 3 | Assignment Notebook Google Drive Submit |
| More assignments coming soon... | |||