assignment 1 : getting started

• Your main goal for this week is to be able to run python programs.
• You should expect to spend about 8 hours per week outside class. If it comes easy to you, or you have experience with similar material already, use the opportunity to explore related topics. If you have trouble and things are going slowly, ask for help and do what you can.
• By Monday, please join the course slack channel. You'll find information about it in the left menu links after you log in. Introduce yourself, and ask a question.
• Log into the course website with you Bennington credentials. Browse through what's there :
  • the course syllabus
  • the resources (books, documentation, software, ...)
  • this week's class notes
  • my videos
• Submit the beginnings of a response to this assignment before Monday's class, telling me
  • What is your computer background?
  • What sort of computer are you used to using?
  • What are you hoping to get out if this class?
  • What are you planning for your weekly schedule for working on this stuff?
  • (The "umber" video may be helpful if you aren't sure how to submit work.)
• Log into jupyter.bennington.college with your Bennington credentials.
  • Create a terminal ("New ... terminal") and explore the command line
  • We'll do some of this together during class on Monday :
  • Work through at least parts 1, 2, and 3 of the software carpentry's unix shell lesson. The file you'll need is data-shell.zip. (Here's a local copy.) After saving that to your computer, you can upload to the jupyterhub with the "upload" button, and unpack it in the terminal with the command "unzip data-shell.zip".
  • Using what you can find in there,
    • What does she have for atomic weight of oxygen?
    • How many days of sunspot data does she have?
    • (Hints: look up the "wc" and "grep -R" commands.)
  • Describe what you did, what you learned, how well it worked or didn't.
  • (The "jupyter" video shows how some of this works.)
• Read chapter 1 in our textbook.
• Run a "hello world" program and the chaos problem from chapter 1 in the textbook. Try to use two or three different python environments to do this, choosing from :
  • the terminal at jupyter.bennington.college
  • a jupyter notebook at jupyter.bennington.college
  • the online pythontutor.com visualization tool
  • on your own computer, installed from python.org
  • Again, describe what you did, and how well it worked or didn't.