Welcome! 👋🏼
Contents
Welcome! 👋🏼¶
We have prepared these optional programming exercises to accompany the laboratory procedures in MATSCI 104L. Completing them is not a requirement for any of the labs and you will not be assessed on programming concepts. That being said, we hope these exercises can be helpful guides for your data analysis and teach you something new—maybe even lead to a grade boost. 💡
Purpose¶
Several students who have taken MATSCI 104L in the past have appreciated the hands-on experimental procedures, but wished that there could also be more guidance during the data analysis portion to facilitate the writeup. Because we care about your feedback and success in this course, we have tried to accommodate this request, but in the context of teaching you some data science (DS) and scientific writing (SW) skills as well. We believe this will help you complete your lab reports and give you transferable skills that can be applied to other pursuits.
Learning outcomes¶
We hope these exercises will help you grow in the following ways:
📊 Create some hella nice plots based on effective data visualization principles.
📝 Incorporate visualizations and statistical analyses of data to strengthen your writing.
🧰 Develop basic proficiency with common Python packages—another tool to add to your toolbox.
Usage¶
These notebooks are meant to be optional and self-guided, where we’ve included ample instructions and links for your reference. Try your best to work it out with your peers, but definitely don’t fret over it—we want you to focus on learning the science and you can always use a different tool to analyze your data.
That being said, before jumping into the lab exercises, we’ve created some tutorials that we hope you find helpful.
If this is your first time using Jupyter Book/Hub (probably most of you):
We strongly recommend you look at How to use Jupyter Book.
If this is also your first time using Python (perhaps some of you):
We recommend you then look at Introduction to Python.
Otherwise, you can proceed to Lab 1: X-ray emission and absorption and get started with the plotting tutorial, which we strongly recommend for everyone to establish best practices. Have fun!