98th ESA Annual Meeting (August 4 -- 9, 2013)

August 03 - 09, 2013

WK 2

Python for Ecologists

Python is a high-level scripting language that is becoming increasingly popular for scientific computing. This all-day workshop is designed to introduce the basics of Python programming to ecologists. Some scripting/programming experience is recommended (e.g. familiarity with R). The morning session will teach the basics of Python. Most of the material is presented within the Python shell and will consist of 15 minute demonstration sections followed by hands-on exercises. This session will touch on computer science basics and how they are implemented in Python. Topics include numbers, operators, lists, modules, functions, namespaces, exceptions, etc. The afternoon session will venture into the Numpy and Scipy packages for scientific computing. Numpy is a basic package for scientific computing with Python. It adds to Python data arrays that can access to a large library of mathematical functions and operations and is the basis for all Scipy packages which extends vastly the computational and algorithmic capabilities of Python. Examples and exercises throughout the day are based on ecological applications. Materials for last years course can be accessed here: http://www.ubertool.org/esa_workshop.html Attendees should bring a laptop (Windows, Mac, or Linux) with Python 2.7 installed.