00_tools

Tools

We will employ the commonly used data science workflow of Python and Jupyter Notebooks during this course. The first assignment contains instructions for how this workflow looks like.

Prerequisites

Please make sure that you have Git, Python and Jupyter installed on your machine. The exercise files have been tested with python version 3.9.7. If you have trouble running the exercise files, try using this version.

Anaconda

If these tools are new to you, the simplest way to get everything running is by using Anaconda. This will install Python, Jupyter, and the most commonly used data science packages on your machine. You can find the install instructions for your OS here.

Jupyter Notebooks

The jupyter notebook App can be launched in your browser by typing

jupyter notebook

inside your terminal. You can then navigate to the .ipynb file and open it.

You can also start the notebook server using the Anaconda Navigator if you chose to use Anaconda.

Detailed instructions for launching a jupyter notebook (including how to change the startup folder) can be found here.

There are also other ways to run a jupyter notebook. Many editors or IDEs have support for running notebooks directly within them, e.g. VS Code or PyCharm.

Running a collaborative jupyter notebook

There are many sites available that offer collaboration services with jupyter notebooks (with a different degree of collaboration functionality). Here is a non-exhaustive list of options:

• CoCalc
• Deepnote
• Google Colab
• Kaggle Kernels
• Binder
• Curvenote

Jupyter notebook is by itself running a local server. You can also host that that server and enable collaboration using the --collaborative flag.

Installing Packages

You can install new python packages using pip or conda. If you installed Anaconda you can also do this using the Anaconda Navigator.

The corresponding terminal commands are:

pip install PACKAGENAME

or

conda install PACKAGENAME

For the Anaconda Navigator you can install additional packages inside the Environments tab. Make sure that you select not installedor all when you are searching for a package. Detailed instructions can be found here.