First Python Notebook

A step-by-step guide to analyzing data with Python and the Jupyter notebook.

What you will learn

This textbook will guide you through an investigation of money in politics using data from the California Civic Data Coalition.

You will learn just enough of the Python computer programming language to work with the pandas library, a popular open-source tool for analyzing data. The course will teach you how to read, filter, join, group, aggregate and rank structured data.

You will also learn how to record, remix and republish your analysis using the Jupyter notebook, a browser-based application for writing code that is emerging as the standard for sharing reproducible research.

You will also learn how to plot and chart your data inside the notebook using the Altair data visualization library, which is on the cutting-edge of developing a simple, structured grammar for generating graphics.

Who can take it

This course is free. If you’ve tried Python once or twice, have good attitude and know how to take a few code crashes in stride, you are qualified. But before you begin be sure to review the prerequisites.

Table of Contents

• Prologue: Prerequisites
• Chapter 1: Hello pipenv
• Chapter 2: Hello notebook
• Chapter 3: Hello pandas
• Chapter 4: Hello money in politics
• Chapter 5: Hello data
• Chapter 6: Hello columns
• Chapter 7: Hello filters
• Chapter 8: Hello merge
• Chapter 9: Hello totals
• Chapter 10: Hello sorting
• Chapter 11: Hello groupby
• Chapter 12: Hello remix
• Chapter 13: Hello charts
• About the authors