2026–2027 Current

Scientific Programming: Part A — Programming

← All courses · Also see: 2025–2026 edition
  • DegreeData Science
  • PeriodSeptember – October
  • InstructorAndrea Passerini
  • Teaching assistantErich Robbi
  • Office hoursPlease write an email to arrange a call.
  • Lecture time Monday 14:30–16:30 (lecture, room a108)
    Tuesday 16:30–18:30 (lab, room a201)
    Thursday 11:30–13:30 (lecture, room b108)
    Friday 15:30–17:30 (lab, room a201)
  • CommunicationsPlease check the Moodle page of the course for news and updates.
  • Bibliography Allen Downey, Think Python — How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, Green Tea Press (pdf)
    M. Lutz, Learning Python (5th edition), O'Reilly, 2013
  • ExamWritten exam — see course introduction slides for details.
Materials

Objectives

Computer processing is a key component of modern data analysis pipelines, and plays an increasingly important role in many fields of science. The goal of the first part is to introduce the Python programming language, one of the most widely used scientific computing languages, and a collection of libraries that can be used to analyze data.

At the end of the module, students are expected to:

  • Remember the syntax and semantics of the Python language;
  • Understand programs written by other individuals;
  • Analyze a simple data analysis task and reformulate it as a programming problem;
  • Evaluate which features of the language (and related scientific libraries) can be used to solve the task;
  • Construct a Python program that appropriately solves the task;
  • Evaluate the results of the program.

Slides

Lab

TBD