 In this lecture series, we're going to make use of Python to do everything. We're going to import our data We're going to analyze our data. Do our statistical analysis draw plots and graphs figures Everything in Python and I've got to sort of motivate why we are Going to use Python. Why choose Python now? This is an ipython notebook it's code that you can write that renders right inside of a browser and I'll introduce you to ipython later in the lecture series What is Python? Well, Python is a programming language just as Java C++ C sharp or Programming languages. It's an excellent language to use when you start with computer programming Now this course is not going to turn you into a computer programmer But you're going to pick up so many things that you would be you're going to be well on your way We're going to use a small subset of Python just for statistics It's an enormously powerful language It's free of charge as you can see the free of charge many operating systems for instance Mac OS comes with Python pre-installed most of the Linux distributions have Python pre-installed It's open source in other words Lots of people work on Python that would set it apart from a commercial venture where a company would employ a few sometimes a lot of Codewriters to develop their language or their package, but with the open-source nature of Python There are countless developers out there who work on Python and develop Python for you making it an enormous System and by that I mean that in the best possible way It is enormous and there is so much you can do with it, especially these libraries modules and packages There are so many of them that you can import into Python just expanding the capabilities of Python Again and again and again as developers all developers out there Expand the language through these libraries modules and packages Python just becomes more and more powerful. Now you could use something else You could use other statistical analysis software SPSS For instance very very expensive if you sit at a university and there's a university license For which you might be able to use it, but as soon as you leave that environment you are lost You have to buy this very very expensive There's also limitations to these soft to some of these softwares Now you might say the are statistical language is free of charge as well The thing for me about are though it is and and I don't mean this in a derogatory way But it is a one-horse pony. It is really for statistical analysis If you learn Python you can do so much more. There's many things outside of statistics You might want to do proper web development You can do that with the same code words that we're going to learn here You can use Python for web page development for so many other things It is really a learn once use in so many fields type of product versus the others Very good other products out there if we just think about mathematics itself, Mathematica or MATLAB Very expensive Small number of developers who work on it not open source There are many negatives to all of these other products as good as they are I think I think there is no other choice to make but Python So how do you get Python? You can click on any of these I Python org There we go. That's the website Now Python because of the size of Python and so many people developing it It can become a bit confusing to expand the Python language and expand whatever's installed on your system with new modules and new packages Fortunately, there are companies who bring this all together Now I Python is an interactive computing environment. That's what we're going to use in this course But on their website if you click on there we go ipython.org if you click on their Home page you'll see they install click on install and if you go down you'll see these how I am getting started with Python Continuums Anaconda or in thoughts canopy. I like to use anaconda So when you click on anaconda, it takes you to this install Store page now what that does is it combines a lot of stuff and a lot of modules and packages all in one Installation so you downloaded ones Double-click it and it installs Now if we go back to our notebook here Look how wonderful this notebook is I can actually display web pages within this is an active web page within my code So I wrote a line of code and I've got the web page right in there Now, let's run this one as well run that code. I can run another web page right inside of of My Python environment in my development environment, but this is what the install is about It's going to give you the option of installing for Windows for Mac OS and for Linux Those would be your options for install once you do that you're going to get these download buttons both in 64 bit for modern computers modern operating systems and the older 32 bit to play it safe One other thing that you're going to see is Python version 2.7 versus I1 Python 3.4 Now 3.4 is the newest development Environment the newest development of Python and that is really the one that I'm working with here Quite a few things have changed between 2.7 3.4 Some of the code will not work for you if you sat with 2.7 which is still the default installation on many systems So I'm on macOS here. So I would go there I would say I want 3.4 and there's my installer Anything for macOS version 10.7 or higher is going to use the 64 bit And I'm basically just going to install that The butte or click that it will download you double click on the download and it installs You can get some information as to how to run it just in the documentation there for windows Linux as per usual is a bit more convoluted You have to type in a command there, but there's some explanation there how to do the install for windows and macOS You simply down click the download it installs remember 3.4 It install it downloads you double click that download and it installs without problems Select all the defaults as it installs Now this is the packages Let's get on 3.4 there. So I've got an active web page right inside of my development environment inside of my code Now if I look down this list remember I said there these packages and modules that That expand the language now if you download and install this anaconda version For instance of python the same with nthoto, but I like the anaconda version Look at most of these packages that get pre-installed Together with that download that you're going to do and bar one or two that we have to do manually Everything that we're going to use in this course is already installed in In the anaconda version that you're going to download all of these packages You'll see there they are in this installers some some are false there So they won't be so one or two of them will have to do manually and I'll show you how to do that So please please please consider not using the default python installation or installing it in any other way Then to come to anaconda and that really comes from the ipython If we were just to jump back a little bit comes from the There we go right to the start the ipython the ipython.org Website is click on install and then go through to anaconda Once it is installed. How do you run it? Well, there are two ways to run it. Let me show you this image This is a launcher. Now if you install on windows or you install on macOS You're going to get this launcher. It's either going to be on the desktop or you have to place it on the desktop Or uh, uh, it's just going to be somewhere within your Folder structure. In other words, if you hit the start button Or you look under applications on macOS just look for this launcher It will launch all the development environments that come with anaconda and the three of them one is the ipython notebook Which is what we're using here. What what we're going to use for this course There's also a console Cutie console and there's also a spider app That's not the same for linux and linux. You'll have to start it manually and the way to start it manually Is to under linux or macOS? There's something called the terminal. There's the terminal To search for terminal. This program will come up and inside of this we can type ipython space notebook That would be for macOS And for linux and in windows if you look for the command prompt It looks the same as this if you're typing ipython notebook and hit enter Your default browser will open as it has here And with the development environment ipython notebook ready to run and you can start coding Hope i've convinced you that python is the best way to use it's quite easy to install Let's all install the same version from anaconda 3.4 64 bit or if you have an older machine 32 bit for your specific operating system