Advanced Python Programming Course: “The feeling that a new world has opened up with limitless possibilities!”
From October 20 to 22, a short-term advanced training course “Programming in Python for the collection and analysis of data” was held at the Higher School of Economics at Perm Higher School of Economics, conducted by Ilya Schurov, Associate Professor, Department of Higher Mathematics, Higher School of Economics.
About 20 faculty members took part in it, including 6 IDLab researchers. Despite the diverse composition (about 25% of students have never programmed, another 20% have only basic programming skills), the course turned out to be very useful for solving research problems, and at the same time accessible to understanding:
“The course was very useful for me for several reasons. Firstly, it contributed to a deeper understanding of the logic and structure of programming, which can be valuable for the development of other software packages. Secondly, Python was very convenient for collecting and primary processing of open data. which will significantly reduce my time and financial expenses for research. Thirdly, I liked the way Ilya conducted classes - he showed that you can quickly, clearly and efficiently tell students about the complex and unfamiliar st. It is a valuable experience that it would be good to learn from "
Grigory Teplykh, Junior Researcher.
“I really liked the course. He was extremely intense, and it was even surprising that in such a short time Ilya managed to move from basic things like data types to real practical examples of data collection for specific sites. I knew before that it was possible to automatically collect data from sites, but it seemed to me that this required a lot of knowledge in the programming language and I would spend more time learning the language than collecting data. It turned out that thanks to additional packages, the most difficult part has already been implemented and it remains to configure the details, which it is quite possible to master in a short course. I am very grateful to Ilya for the Python course, I hope he will come and give a more in-depth course! ”
Julia Naydenova, Research Fellow
“What are your impressions of the course?” If in a nutshell - the feeling that a new world has opened with limitless possibilities! Performing each next task for all three days, gave rise to more and more new ideas about where all this can be applied and to "get" that information, access to which was very difficult a few days ago. For me, as a person for whom the word "programmer" means another more advanced class of people, it was absolutely amazing to understand that to learn how to solve some problems about how to parse everything that can be completely solved and comprehensible. For this, my special thanks go to Ilya, an amazing teacher who was passionate about the process and able to teach it in the most accessible way! look forward to continuing! ”
Anna Bykova, Research Fellow
“For me it was the first experience with the Python language. It turned out that programming is not only useful and allows you to save time when working with data, but also very exciting! Before the courses, we independently studied the basic syntax using the pithontutor.ru Internet resource, then Ilya talked about web scraping tools. We downloaded data from Wikipedia and a site with data from the wholesale electricity market, the official pages of teachers on the HSE website, and dealt with the API of the social network Vkontakte. Ilya examined in detail all the questions of the audience and gave valuable recommendations on working with the sites we are interested in. We will use the acquired knowledge both in research and in teaching, and we really hope for the continuation of the course! ”
Marina Zavertyaeva, Research Fellow.