Introduction¶
Overview¶
What is this?¶
This is an open online book containing short data and informatics tutorials. It is part of the University of Alabama Libraries efforts to support Research Data Services.
Warning
This book is in-progress and is currently in the early stages. Check back in a few months for more content.
What kind of content is included?¶
The scope of this book is to provide short topic-based tutorials related to data preparation, basic data analysis, and visualization using several different programming languages. By “topic-based”, we mean that we will demonstrate specific use-cases and workflows such as splitting files based on a pattern or looping through a directory of data files to automate plotting.
While there may be some introductory programming content in this book, the content is not meant to be a general introduction to programming. Instead our aim with the Data and Informatics Tutorials book is to provide some short scripting based workflows for working with data. For more general introductions to programming, we recommend searching the UA Libraries Scout database for programming books (e.g., TI matlab).
See also
UA Libraries Workshop lessons and references therein for more general programming content 1.
Which Programming Languages are Covered?¶
Currently, we are planning to provide tutorial content in Python, Unix Shell (Bash), Matlab, and Mathematica. We’re generally going to create the tutorial first with Python, and then will adapt and reproduce the workflow with the other programming languages. We hope by doing this it will provide the reader with not only a choice, but also some information about the differences between the programming workflows. In some cases, for example, it may be preferable to choose one language over the other.
For good luck, let’s add Hello World! in each programming language:
>>> print("Hello World!")
$ echo "Hello World!"
>> disp("Hello World!")
In[1]:= Print["Hello World!"]
What about Video Tutorials?¶
Yes! We plan to also reproduce selected written tutorials from this book as videos. In those cases, a link will be provided to the video on the corresponding tutorial page.
Who is Creating the Content?¶
The Data and Informatics Tutorial content is authored by University of Alabama Libraries faculty and student assistants. Specific authors are noted on each tutorial or document page.
References