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MATH 131: Introduction to Python is a 1 unit, 5 week course offered at Chico State through the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. The course consists of Lessons, with accompanying Notes, and Assignments. We will learn to code in the programming language Python using Google Colab notebooks.
Lessons are the webpages found on this website, named after each week of the course. Lessons contain the explanations of what's to come in the Assignments. You are currently reading the Lesson associated with Week 00. There is one Lesson for each of the five weeks of this course.
The Lessons have associated Notes. Each Note is a Google Colab notebook, e.g. Week 01 Notes. Notes are par-baked Colab notebooks that are meant to provide you with a space to follow along with the programming in the Lesson. Google Colab notebooks are discussed in more detail below.
Each week has an Assignment, e.g. Week 02 Assignment, starting with Week 01. You are responsible for completing the Assignments throughout the course. Each Lesson will have a link to the associated Assignment for you to complete.
For assignments, we will use Google Colab with your username@mail.csuchico.edu account (same password as your username@csuchico.edu account).
Google Colab provides a notebook environment where the user can develop a reproducible document that blends text and code together. Such reproducible documents are popular in the world of data science, statistics, machine learning, and the various applied sciences that use programming. By combining text and code, you can walk (via text) your audience through an analysis (usually via code and/or math), showing the exact code you used to draw any conclusions about the data or otherwise.
We will use Google Colab for free, as part of your campus Google account username@mail.csuchico.edu. The free aspect means we'll have to deal with some issues that don't otherwise come about if we were to install Python on our own personal machines. I, Edward, have made the active choice to try Google Colab instead of teaching you how to install Python on your personal machine, because I believe we can get started faster this way. If you want to follow along with this course using different tools, and you understand the consequences you face for doing so, please see your options on the page Week 06 and beyond.
From here, there's really no better way to learn about Google Colab than to go touch it. Here's a link to the Colab notebook associated with Week 00: Start here.