Automation and scripting in bash for absolute beginners

Walter C. Koerner Library 1958 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

This in-person workshop will demystify the command line and get you started using Bash and Bash scripting. Warning: You might find that working in the command line is actually really fun and addictive! Prerequisites: None Location: Walter C. Koerner Library, Research Commons' Presentation Room (548/552) Software installation: If your laptop runs Mac or Linux, you […]

Free

What format to choose to save your data

Walter C. Koerner Library 1958 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Which file format should you use when saving your research dataset? Besides the obvious question of how to encode your data structures in a file, you might also want to consider portability (the ability to write/read data across different operating systems and different programming languages and libraries), the inclusion of metadata (data description), I/O bandwidth […]

Free

Authoring scientific documents with Markdown and Quarto

Walter C. Koerner Library 1958 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

This in-person workshop will show you how to easily create beautiful scientific documents (html, pdf, websites, books…)—complete with formatted text, dynamic code, and figures. We will first cover the simple and ubiquitous markdown syntax, then introduce you to Quarto (https://quarto.org/), an open-source tool combining the powers of Jupyter and Pandoc to turn your text and […]

Free

Searching the Git history

Walter C. Koerner Library 1958 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Abstract: What is the point of creating all these commits if you are unable to make use of them because you can't find the information you need in them? In this workshop, we will learn how to search your files at any of their versions and search your commits logs. By the end of the […]

Free

Version control of scientific datasets with DataLad

Walter C. Koerner Library 1958 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Abstract: While Git is a fantastic tool for version control of software, written content and other collections of small files, it can become unmanageable for large, multi-GB data files. Over the years several different Git extensions that reduce the impact of large files in your Git repository were developed, e.g. git-annex and Git LSF. DataLad […]

Free

Managing large hierarchical datasets with PyTables

Walter C. Koerner Library 1958 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Abstract: PyTables is a free and open-source Python library for managing large hierarchical datasets. It is built on top of numpy and the HDF5 scientific dataset library, and it focuses both on performance and interactive analysis of very large datasets. For large data streams (think multi-dimensional arrays or billions of records) it outperforms databases in […]

Free

Machine Learning: Finding pre-trained models for transfer learning

Online/Virtual Event

Abstract: Training models from scratch requires way too much data, time, and computing power (or money) to be a practical option. This is why transfer learning has become such a common practice: by starting with models trained on related problems, you are saving time and achieving good results with little data. Now, where do you […]

Free

Introduction to Python – Basic concepts and data structures

Online/Virtual Event

Abstract: Python is a popular language for scientific computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. This introductory course will walk you through the basics of programming in Python. We will cover the main language features – variables and data types, conditionals, lists, for/while loops, list comprehensions, dictionaries, writing functions, and working with external libraries. […]

Free

Introduction to Scientific Python – NumPy, Pandas, xarrays

Online/Virtual Event

Abstract: Building on our previous Python workshop, today we will cover more advanced scientific computing in Python. We will talk about speeding up calculations and working with mathematical arrays with NumPy, working with dataframes in Pandas, and working with scientific datasets with xarray. Setup & Software Installation: You need to have Python installed on your […]

Free

Python for simple data visualizations

Online/Virtual Event

Abstract: Building on our two previous Python workshops, today we will look at various packages to do simple plotting and data visualization in Python. In the hands-on part, we will focus on matplotlib which is a well-established Python plotting library for for creating static and animated visualizations in Python. Setup & Software Installation: You need […]

Free

Web scraping with Python

Online/Virtual Event

Abstract: The internet is a trove of information. A lot of it is publicly available and thus suitable for use in research. Extracting that information and putting it in an organized format for analysis can however be extremely tedious. Web scraping tools allow to automate parts of that process and Python is a popular language […]

Free