Module Information
Course Delivery
| Delivery Type | Delivery length / details |
|---|---|
| Practical | 10 x 2 Hour Practicals |
| Lecture | 20 x 1 Hour Lectures |
| Practical | 10 x 1 Hour Practicals |
Assessment
| Assessment Type | Assessment length / details | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| Semester Exam | 3 Hours Online Exam Analysis of data. | 70% |
| Semester Assessment | Lab Worksheets Programming worksheets, signed off each week in practical sesions. | 30% |
| Supplementary Exam | 3 Hours Supplementary Online Exam | 100% |
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module students should be able to:
Plan and execute a computational scientific experiment.
Demonstrate an ability to write small programs in Python
Demonstrate an understanding of the potential biases and sources of error in science.
Analyse a data set (process data, apply appropriate tests, calculate summary statistics, plot results).
Content
Week 1: Introduction, types, variables, if-statements, for- and while- loops. The interpreter, and the evaluation of simple expressions. Editing, saving and loading code.
Week 2: The data structures: Lists and dictionaries.
Week 3: numpy arrays.
Week 4: Functions. Function definition, function calling
Week 5: Organising Python code. Generating documentation (e.g. pydoc), catching and handling exceptions, organising code into modules, executing main (and __main__)
Week 6: Objects and classes. Defining classes, instantiating an object. Inheritance.
Week 7: Working with objects
Week 8: File handling. CSV format.
Week 9: Plotting. Manipulate data and plot results.
Week 10: Review and revision classes
Semester 2
Week 1: The Scientific Method. Structure of a scientific investigation. Hypotheses. Occam's razor. Controls. Correlation vs causation. Falsification. Examples such as intention to treat.
Week 2: Randomness. Random number generators. Random distributions. Latin squares. Controlled and double blind trials.
Week 3: Summary statistics: measures of central tendency and dispersion. Use of scipy.
Week 4: Hypothesis tests. t-tests. Confidence. p-values. Correction of multiple tests. Correlation.
Week 5: Application to real data.
Week 6: Sampling. Bootstrap. Monte Carlo. Biases.
Weeks 7-9: Hot topics in science.
Week 10: Review and Revision classes.
Brief description
This module introduces students to the Python programming language and more broadly, the Scientific Python Stack. The module will then cover the basic structure of a scientific experiment, hypotheses and testing, with illustrated examples of good and bad practice. We’ll discuss the difficulty in achieving randomness, sources of bias during sampling and introduce appropriate statistical testing processes for various types of study.
Module Skills
| Skills Type | Skills details |
|---|---|
| Application of Number | Inherent in subject. |
| Communication | Documenting code. |
| Improving own Learning and Performance | From feedback (automatic feedback from computer and in-practical feedback from demonstrators). |
| Information Technology | Inherent in subject. |
| Personal Development and Career planning | No, though the skills in this module are highly in demand from employers. |
| Problem solving | Inherent in subject. |
| Research skills | Using a Computer. Searching the language and library documentation. |
| Subject Specific Skills | Programming skills, debugging skills, statistics skills, data analysis skills. |
| Team work | No |
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 5