Pyhton on the Portal
On your course, you may come across some elements of coding. One of our current students, Sam West, has put together an introductory course on Python to help you get familiar with some of the basics, and beyond.
Python is a programming language, developed in 1991. Whilst it can be used by computer scientists for web and software development, it can also be used by material scientists and engineers for data analysis and performing complex calculations.
As you explore python, you may realise that some websites refer to the difference between Python 2 and Python 3. This course uses Python 3 because it is the most up to date version of python but be aware that some online python resources use python 2 which is slightly different.
It is also important to note that there are often multiple ways of coding the same outcome in python, so don’t worry if your code doesn’t look exactly like the code in my screenshots. It is just important to remember to thoroughly test your code to ensure that it works for all outcomes.
This course walks you through the basics of Python, with a number of examples for you to work through on your own. It is broken down into the following sections:
Each section has a number of slides with green backgrounds. These slides contain exercises for you to have a go at. The final further examples section contains five further exercises for you to complete. These encompass and combine skills from the previous seven sections.
Taking Python Further
This course covers just a basic introduction to python. However, there are plenty of opportunities to take your python skills further:
NumPy is a module that works with arrays. They are a bit like a list but have a number of advantages over them. For more information on NumPy, have a look at the following website: https://www.w3schools.com/python/numpy_intro.asp
Machine Learning is becoming of increasing importance in Materials Science & Engineering, It involves making a computer learn and predict outcomes from studying data and statistics. For more information on using machine learning, have a look at the following link: https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_ml_getting_started.asp
Python Basics.pdfPython: The Basics
Python Functions.pdfPython Functions
Python Lists.pdfPython Lists
Python Control Flow.pdfPython Control Flow
Python Loops.pdfPython Loops
Python Modules _ Importing Data.pdfPython Modules and Importing Data
Plotting Data and Linear Regression.pdfPlotting Data and Linear Regression
Further Examples.pdf