CST383 - Week 1

This was the first week of CST383: Introduction to Data Science. I started off by watching the recorded orientation video and reading a little bit about Python because I have never used Python before. I hope I will be able to pick it up quickly so that I can do well in this class. I installed Anaconda which is the development platform we will be using for this class.

We started off learning about Numpy, one of the most popular, foundational libraries in Python. It is especially useful when dealing with multidimensional arrays and matrices. We continued on to Pandas, which is good for data manipulation and analysis. After watching the lectures, I completed 4 labs, which helped review and familiarize myself with the new information. Then I did the homework which was 25 coding questions. The last two were difficult because we were required to write functions and I am still not so comfortable with the Python syntax. I used loops in my code, which I know should be avoided and replaced with shorter vectorized operations.

Overall, I think I will enjoy this class and I have already learned so much in the first week!