DATA 101

Here’s the notebook with our Pandas Series practice from today. Playing with this, trying different things, and making sure you understand the output — these are all fantastically great ideas!!

I forgot to announce this, but yes! That seemed to work well last time.

Check out this news article about a possible health scare. Can you spot the potential for any confounding factors?

Here’s the notebook with the code from quiz #3. Running it, printing out variables (with the print() statement), and generally playing with it to see how it works, is an excellent and praiseworthy idea, especially if you did poorly on the quiz.

Lab #2 has been posted! It is in the Jupyter notebook which you can copy from here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VQhhqEtpCQvqUt30TM6ttInIbpz9Szwz/view?usp=sharing

(When you click on that link, it may say “no preview available” and give you a button that says to “open in Google Colab.” If so, go ahead and click that button to open it in Colab.)

This is “due” by next Wednesday. You’ll want to make sure you’ve read and understood all the material in Crystal Ball chapters 1-9 before proceeding.

This is going to come up a lot, so I might as well make a general post about it right now.

If you are having trouble with a lab problem and would like me to look at it, I won’t be able to access your notebook online until you give me permission.

To give me permission: (1) click on the “Share” button on Colab, and (2) use stephenclarkdavies _AT_ gmail _DOT_ com (spelled and punctuated as an actual email address of course) as the sharee.

That should trigger an invitation email to be sent to me, so I can look at your notebook and help you diagnose your problems. You should also email me directly (at my UMW email address, stephen _AT_ umw _DOT_ com) stating what specifically your question is or you want me to look at.

Lastly, realize that you’re not “turning in” the labs at all this semester. They are for your learning only!

Sorry so long to post this; I’ve been slammed today.

The Napheesa Collier problem on lab #1 had some less-than-optimally-named variables, which may have contributed to people missing that problem and not knowing why.

Let me explain.

• In basketball, there are three ways to score. One is a “free throw,” which is worth one point. One is shooting a “normal” basket, worth two points. The last is a “three-pointer,” which is a basket you made by shooting far away from the hoop, behind a special line, and is worth three points.
• In the lab, the variable named shots represents the total number of “normal” and “three-point” baskets Napheesa made. Note carefully: it does not include free throws (the 1 pointers), but it does include the three-pointers.
• Additional hint: you don’t have to do any amazing shuffling or resorting of the line beginning with “total_pts =“. All you have to do is add missing parentheses.

I reluctantly will have to cancel our class for Monday, Sept. 15th. Consider this just an advance heads-up!

If you’d like to examine or play around with the main quiz #1 question, here it is.

Your first lab assignment has been posted! It is in the Jupyter notebook which you can copy from here:

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ddFviJx4qsDo8inOkLeM2MX_n_2Nvbfl

(When you click on that link, it may say “no preview available” and give you a button that says to “open in Google Colab.” If so, go ahead and click that button to open it in Colab.)

You will then see a read-only copy of the notebook. You should then go to “Save a copy in Drive” from the “File” menu to save your own, writable copy of it. Then, read the instructions, and fill out the code cells as required! At the bottom is a cell which, when you execute, will run my “checker script” and verify that everything has been done correctly. (Unless your errors are egregious, it will also point out which problems you have missed points on, and which you should go back and correct.)

Good luck! This lab is “due” by next Wednesday. You’ll want to make sure you’ve read and understood all the material in Crystal Ball chapters 1-5 before proceeding.