Python Programming Basics

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, you will have covered the following learning outcomes:

● I can use the print() function to display the output of a python program.
● I can create variables to store data in a python program.
● I can write comments to provide explanations of how code works.
● I can write arithmetic operators to perform mathematical operations.
● I can determine the data types of different types of data.
● I can use lists, dictionaries, and sets to store data.
● I can use conditional (if) statements to check for conditions in data.
● I can use for loops and while loops to iterate through data.
● I can create functions, classes, and objects to write reusable code.

Overview
The Python programming language is one of the most popular programming languages in
Data Science. A comparison from a Kaggle survey [ Link] of several programming languages
used in data science shows that the programming language continues to grow in popularity due
to ease of use, vast developer community, and appropriate data science libraries.

By the end of this session, you will be able to demonstrate the use of crucial python
programming concepts such as printing, variables, comments, arithmetic operators, data types,
lists, conditional (if) statements, dictionaries, sets, for loops, while loops, functions, classes, and
objects.

Terminology
● Comments are used in our code to provide explanatory information about the code.
● Variables - These are names that we give to computer memory locations used to
store values in a computer program.
● Arithmetic Operators - These are mathematical functions that take two values and
perform a calculation on them.
● Data types - A data type is a classification that specifies which type of value a
variable contains.
● Lists - A list is a compound data type that allows for storing items of different data
types.
● Conditional (if) Statements - We use conditional-if statements to make decisions.
For example, to run code only when statements are true.

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 ● Dictionaries - We use a dictionary to store key-value pairs. The retrieval, adding,
removing, and modifying of values happens through keys.
● Sets - A set is an unordered collection of elements with no duplicate elements. Set
elements can be of any data type but cannot have mutable elements like lists, sets,
or dictionaries.
● For loops are used to iterate over a sequence, i.e., list, dictionary, string, etc.
● While loops execute a set of statements as long as a condition is true.
● Functions - A function is a block of organized, reusable code.

Main Resources
Reading
Printing
● print() is one of the most popular python commands.
● This command print means "show on the screen".

Variables
● Variables are storage containers for data.
● For example, a food variable could contain "Spaghetti" or "Rice" or any other
value.
● The value of a variable can change depending on conditions or information
passed to the program.
● Variable names must begin with a letter, underscore, or non-number character.
Each programming language has its naming conventions to guide how variables
are named.
● Every programming language has reserved words. We can’t use these words as
variable names, for example, Date. Instead, we might name your date-related
variables dte or StartDate.
● Once we create variables, we are then able to perform operations taking into
account the stored values.
Comments
● We use comments to explain how a program works.
● Comments don’t have any effect on your program.
● Comments have the following goals:
○ To explain what a particular code does.
○ To explain something which might not be evident to the reader.
○ To clarify your intention behind a particular line or block of code.
○ To serve as a reminder to change something in the future.
Arithmetic Operators
● Arithmetic operators perform mathematical operations such as addition,
subtraction, multiplication, division, modulus, exponentiation, etc.

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 ● The addition operator will produce the sum of numeric operands or string
concatenation.
● The subtraction operator will subtract two operands and produce their difference.
● The division operator will produce the quotient of its operands where the left
operand is the dividend, and the right operand is the divisor.
● The multiplication operator will produce the product of the operands.
● The modulus operator returns the remainder when we divide an operand by a
second operand, i.e., 5 / 2.
● The exponentiation operator will return the result of raising the first operand to
the power second operand.
● We use the increment operator to increment (add one) to its operand and return
a value.
● The decrement operator will decrement (subtract one from) its operand and
return a value.
Data Types
● A data type is a classification that allows specifying which type of value a variable
contains.
● It also allows us to determine what type of mathematical operations we can apply
to any given data.
● There are different types of python data types: integer, float, string, lists,
dictionaries, etc.
● The integer value is a positive or negative whole number.
● The float value is a Real number with floating-point representation.
● The string value is a sequence of characters.
● A list can contain data of different data types.
● A dictionary is an ordered set of a key-value pair of items.
● Other data types include tuples and sets.
Lists
● A list is a compound data type that allows for the storage of items of different
data types.
● Lists are mutable, which means that we can change an item in the lists by
accessing it directly.
● Below is an example of a list:
cakes = ['blueberry', 'vanilla', 'strawberry', 'chocolate', 'apple'].
● Each element or value that is inside a list is called an item.
● We work with lists when we would like to work with many related values, i.e.,
food, songs, emails, etc.
● The various operations that we can perform on lists are indexing (which allows us
to access its items), slicing, updating, appending and removing.

Conditional (if) Statements

● We use conditional if statements to make decisions.
● We write an "if statement" using the if keyword and then print out the result when
one of the conditions is true or false.

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 ● The "elif statement" is used when we have a third possibility as the outcome. We
can use multiple elif conditions to check for the 4th, 5th, 6th possibilities in our
code.
● We can also nest our if statements by including if statements within our if
statements.
● While working with if statements, we also have to take into consideration
indentation. Indentation is the white space at the beginning of a line that python.
Dictionaries
● A dictionary is a data type that stores key-value pairs. It enables us to retrieve,
add, remove, modify values using keys.
● To create a dictionary, we place items inside curly braces separated by a comma,
as shown in the example below. These items usually have a key and value.
● dictionary_example = {1: 'apple', 2: 'ball'}
● While working with dictionaries, we can retrieve, modify, add and remove
elements from the dictionary. Thus, having them as mutable.
● Dictionary key-value pairs are unordered, meaning that the added key-value
pairs don’t necessarily reflect what order they will have when they are retrieved.
● They can also be nested, which means that a dictionary can contain another
dictionary.
Sets
● A set is an unordered collection of elements with no duplicate elements.
● Set elements can be of any data type but cannot have mutable elements like
lists, sets, or dictionaries as elements.
For Loops
● We use a for loop to iterate over a sequence, i.e., list, dictionary, string, etc.
● The loop continues until we have gone through the final item list.
● We separate the body of the for loop from the rest of the code using indentation.
● We can also have for loops within for loops; This is what we would call nesting.
● We can use a break statement in a for loop to stop the loop before it has looped
through all the items.
While Loops
● A while loop executes a set of statements as long as a condition is true.
● A while loop requires we initialize a variable outside the loop.
● The break statement within the while loop would immediately terminate the loop
entirely then proceed to the first statement following the loop body.
● The continue statement would end the current loop iteration and jump to the top
of the loop back to the control expression to determine whether the loop should
execute again or terminate.

Functions
● A function is a block of organized, reusable code.
● A common usage of functions is to implement mathematical functions.
● As we will get to see, a function block begins with the keyword def followed by
the function name and parentheses ().

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 ● We can define a function by giving it a name, specifying the parameters to be
included in the function then including blocks of code within the function’s body.
● We use parameters to pass input data to functions and, as a result, get an
output.
● We use the return keyword to exit a function and pass back some value from the
function.
● Lastly, to execute a function, we call the function name.

Classes and Objects

● A class is a user-defined blueprint that performs a set of related tasks.
● Classes contain variables and methods which can be accessed and used by
creating an instance of that class (i.e., an object).
● Attributes are the variables that belong to a class. Methods are functions defined
as part of a class.
● The __init__() function is used to perform operations when creating an object,
i.e., assign values to object properties, which are the mentioned attributes.
● A `self` parameter refers to the current instance of the class and is used to
access variables that belong to the class.

Further Resources
● Python Basics for Data Science. [Link]
● Python Documentation. [Link]

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