Python 3 Basics Tutorial
(c) 2015 Dr. Kristian Rother ([email protected])
with contributions by Allegra Via, Kaja Milanowska and Anna Philips
Distributed under the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike License 4.0
Sources of this document can be found on https://github.com/krother/Python3_Basics_Tutorial
Introduction
Who is this tutorial for?
This is a tutorial for novice programmers. You are the learner I had in mind when writing this tutorial if:
- you have worked a little with a different programming language like R, MATLAB or C.
- you have no programming experience at all
- you know Python well and would like to teach others
This tutorial works best if you follow the chapters and exercises step by step.
The dataset of U.S. baby names
The authorities of the United States have recorded the first names of all people born as U.S. citizens since 1880. The dataset is publicly available on http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html . However for the protection of privacy only names used at least 5 times appear in the data.
Throughout this tutorial, we will work with this data.
If you are an experienced programmer
If you are fluent in any programming language, this tutorial might be very easy for you. Of course, you can work through the exercises to get the Python syntax into your fingers. However, this tutorial contains very little material on the higher abstraction levels in Python, like classes, namespaces or even functions.
For a tutorial for non-beginners, I recommend the following free online books:
- Learn Python the Hard Way - a bootcamp-style tutorial by Zed Shaw
- How to think like a Computer Scientist - a very systematic, scientific tutorial by Allen B. Downey
- Dive into Python 3 - explains one sophisticated program per chapter - by Mark Pilgrim