What you should know before attending

What you should know to benefit from attending this workshop

To be able to keep up with this workshop, you should have some amount of previous experience with a programming language like Python, R, Matlab, Perl, C, or Java. If you have only used GUI-driven applications like Excel or SPSS you are welcome to attend the workshop, but you probably will struggle to follow the workshop contents.

You are probably ready for the workshop if you are familiar with the following concepts in the context of some programming language (not necessarily in Python):

• The difference between a "primitive" and "compound" data value

• The differences among floating point, integer, and character values

• Variables in a computer program -- the difference between a variable's name and its storage (i.e. references versus values).

• "loops" (i.e. "for loops"): what happens when a loop executes? What is an "index variable"?

• The difference between iteration and recursion

• Defining a function as an input/output relationship

• Passing function arguments as "values" versus "references"

• What happens when a function calls another function?

• What happens when a function call appears in a loop?

• Return values and side effects of a function

• Scope of variables in a computer program (i.e. local/global scope)

• Passing a function as an argument to another function

• Basic data structures (lists, associative arrays, sets)

• Modifying a data structure in-place versus creating a copy and modifying it