Data Carpentry Workshop

Environmental Defense Fund

Online

Aug 17-25, 2020

Instructors: Matthew Aiello-Lammens, Ian Carroll, Vinícius Salazar, David Yakobovitch

Helpers: Melissa Fabros, Paige Scudder

General Information

Data Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience, and its lessons are domain specific, building on learners' existing knowledge to enable them to quickly apply skills learned to their own research. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing".

Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

Where: This training will take place online. The instructors will provide you with the information you will need to connect to this meeting.

When: Aug 17-25, 2020. Add to your Google Calendar.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).

Accessibility: We are dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all. Please notify the instructors in advance of the workshop if you require any accommodations or if there is anything we can do to make this workshop more accessible to you.

Contact: Please email jtheis@edf.org for more information.

Roles: To learn more about the roles at the workshop (who will be doing what), refer to our Workshop FAQ.


Code of Conduct

Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.


Collaborative Notes

We will use this collaborative document for sharing notes, URLs and bits of code.


Surveys

Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.

Pre-workshop Survey

Post-workshop Survey


Schedule

Monday, Aug 17

Before starting Pre-workshop survey
Setup
1-5PM ET David/Ian Data Management with SQL

Tuesday, Aug 18

2-4PM ET Matt/Ian Data Organization in Spreadsheets
4-5PM ET Ian/Matt Python: Data analysis and Visualization

Wednesday, Aug 19

2-5PM ET Ian/Vini Continuation of Python

Monday, Aug 24

12-3PM ET Vini/Matt Continuation of Python

Tuesday, Aug 25

12-3PM ET David/Vini Continuation of Python
After ending Post-workshop survey

Syllabus


Setup

To participate in a Data Carpentry workshop, you will need access to the software described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.

Required software

The setup instructions for the Data Carpentry Ecology workshops (with Python) can be found at the workshop overview site. You do not need to install OpenRefine for this workshop.

Videoconferencing & Chat

The workshop will be conducted using Bluejeans, which should be familiar to EDF participants. The Slack channel #python-training-2020 in the EDF Digital workspace is for classroom discussion and also the "rally point" in case of videoconference meltdown.

Set up your workspace

Like other Carpentries workshops, you will be learning by "coding along" with the Instructors. To do this, you will need to have both the window for the tool you will be learning about (a terminal, RStudio, your web browser, etc..) and the window for the video conference client open. In order to see both at once, we recommend using one of the following set up options:

This blog post includes detailed information on how to set up your screen to follow along during the workshop.