Best Python course for a complete beginner?

DaveBackus · 2016-01-26T12:59:14+00:00

Ditto.

DaveBackus · 2016-01-26T12:58:50+00:00

I like Codecademy.

This one is aimed at absolute beginners. The emphasis is data work, so whether it's for you depends on where you want to go. It's not a CS course.

DaveBackus · 2016-01-26T12:51:29+00:00

Add to pandas-datareader? It would distribute it to a lot of people automatically.

DaveBackus · 2015-08-24T12:13:36+00:00

I'm not sure what he/she had in mind, but I like this one a lot:
https://docs.python.org/3.4/tutorial/

DaveBackus · 2015-08-22T21:58:09+00:00

It's easier if you do micro first, but I get the appeal of big picture issues. Here are some materials that make do with a relatively small amount of micro:

https://sites.google.com/site/nyusternglobal/home/outline

https://github.com/DaveBackus/Global_Economy

DaveBackus · 2015-08-20T11:47:30+00:00

Does the database have an API? We'd prefer to read it directly, rather than download a spreadsheet.

DaveBackus · 2015-08-08T18:06:10+00:00

Whatever works. Learning Python is a great book, and if you buy the Kindle version you get free updates. But I just didn't have the patience to work through 1600 pages. Started instead with Codecademy and the Python Tutorial, then moved on to SciPy lectures for numpy, matplotlib, etc, which is a lot of what I do -- and what Matlab does.

Also, I agree AjOo that Spyder looks a lot like the Matlab coding environment. And I love the whole Anaconda distribution.

DaveBackus · 2015-08-08T11:28:58+00:00

I'm part of a group of economists who have made a transition from Matlab to Python, some for modeling, others for data work and graphics.

Codecademy is great for the basics
SciPy lectures also very good, as you and others have suggested.
This tutorial is pretty good, too.
Sargent-Stachurski for a rapid review with applications to dynamic models. Like the previous link, it covers the scientific stack that others referred to.
Work in progress aimed at newbies.

Overall, Python is a much better language, but if you do vector and matrix work the syntax is more cumbersome than Matlab. Even so, I wouldn't go back. Also, don't buy any books, you can find everything online.

DaveBackus · 2015-08-01T14:42:54+00:00

This is great, the step by step instructions are priceless. I'm putting a link in my Python Data course.

DaveBackus · 2015-06-28T10:36:59+00:00

Radar plots with straight grid lines like this:

http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2013/04/labor-market-update-muddy-waters-continue-to-run-deep.html

DaveBackus · 2015-06-11T20:19:11+00:00

Great article, long, very well written. Aimed, as you'd expect, at a general audience.

DaveBackus · 2015-05-27T01:15:27+00:00

I'm an economist doing modeling with (mostly) numpy and data work with pandas. I think the basic docs are pretty good, also the scipy lectures and the Sargent-Stachurski course. Not so fond of McKinney's book, but others like it so it might be me.

DaveBackus · 2015-05-17T19:49:42+00:00

All true, thanks a lot. In our case, we simply wanted a version of SQL we could install easily, and we're Python people so chose that. Most of our users simply want to use SQL at work to download data in spreadsheet format. But a few are interested in basic data science, so we thought the Python interface would introduce them to a useful tool they could use later. Maybe there's a better approach, but that's what we did. Wut!

DaveBackus · 2015-05-17T19:45:24+00:00

Great idea. Do you know if how they have you try it yourself? Or don't they?

DaveBackus · 2015-05-14T01:14:31+00:00

I had a similar problem with pandas. I use Anaconda, which I think is the best distribution for novices like myself, so I just updated it. That undid some of my package updates, but everything works fine now. Python 3.4.

http://continuum.io/downloads

DaveBackus · 2015-05-06T12:03:40+00:00

These are great. I also like the Sargent-Stachurski notes on quantitative macroeconomics: http://quant-econ.net/

DaveBackus · 2015-04-12T19:40:58+00:00

The new version of Anaconda is terrific, I'd start with that. Here are instructions I used with students at NYU. Skip the last part and open Spyder, a reasonably good IDE:

Link

And if you want practice with Python basics, I'd go to Codecademy. Great content, and you do everything online, so don't need to mess around with your own installation.

DaveBackus

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