Course Structure

Before we start our journey towards learning data science, let us familiarize ourselves with the content you will find throughout the lessons.

In a lesson, we may introduce new terminology. For consistency and ease of learning, here are the following meanings of the three different text formats we will utilize:

  • Terminology: bold will be used when introducing new keywords.
  • Code elements: code elements such as functions, methods, iterators, operators, and datatypes will be in code blocks.
  • Variables: italic will be used for values, variables, arguments, and parameters.

In some lessons, there may be a multiple choice question or an interactive code editor, or both. Let's learn how to use each.

Practice question - Multiple choice

Practice questions come at the end of some lessons, are optional, and are provided as review to strengthen our knowledge of what we just learned in the lesson.

To demonstrate how multiple choice practice questions work, please select the choice that reads 'A'. Then click submit. There should be a prompt below that says this is an incorrect response. Now, submit 'D'. After selecting it, you will notice that the prompt indicates that it is correct, displaying a score of 100%. These questions are on an honor system to yourself. If you simply guess without trying, you're only cheating yourself. So please, try and answer it to the best of your abilities before continuing on to the next lesson.

score: 0%

There will also be a show solution button, that when clicked, will reveal a solution to the question.

Practice question - code editor

There will also be interactive code editors. In these, we are able to type into the code editor and run code. Why don't you try it? Click the Run code button found just below the code editor. There should be a response in a new text box that appears below it. Or if the output is an image, it will fill in the image box below the code editor.

These will be used as examples in lessons and occasionally as practice questions at the end of a lesson. When it is included as a practice question, there will be a Show solution button which when clicked shows the solution, in the same way as the multiple choice question above. If you copy this solution into the code editor, you should get the expected response.

To help you focus on the content, the code you see exists in an environment that may contain more than is visible to you on the screen. This is why in this code editor, when it is run, we observe a sentence instead of just the number 1 that is explicitly returned in the function.

To see the environment that code editors exist within each lesson, you can click the Code environment button at the top of the page, just below the image banner. Clicking it will show the extra code that is also run (but hidden) when each code editor is submitted. Note, that there may be more advanced code in these sections than we have learned up to that point in the course, that is indeed why they are by default hidden. Having said that, you will be able to understand them by the end of the course, as we will eventually cover everything that may appear in any of these code environments.

Practice question - test

When you get to the midterm and final, these interactive code blocks will also have a Run tests button. When this is clicked, it will take your code and run a suite of tests. If it passes the test case, then a check mark will appear. Otherwise a purple arrow will appear. You can click on each of the tests to see what the arguments are as well as a comment on what is expected for the test.

Why don't you try it? This is a partially passing test of a project in the Projects section of the site.

Keywords

Keywords are in bold in the lesson. To clarify any definitions, the keyword and its definition appears in a drop-down menu, at the end of any lesson that introduces new keywords. These are included at the end of the lesson as a quick recap and review before moving on to the next lesson.