Part 1: Software and Tools for Data Science

The first half of this lab will be spent getting you all set up for the semester – you will only need to do this once.

Part 1a: Installing Software Tools

To begin to do Data Science, you need a few basic tools installed on your computer. All of these tools are free, open-source and industry standard. We have prepared guides based on what type of computer you have:

• Windows Setup Guide
• Mac OSX Setup Guide

Part 1b: Creating your STAT 207 git repository

When working in Data Science, you will want to store all of your code and data together, in the cloud, in a “repository”. For this class, we will be using an Illinois-hosted repository called GitHub Enterprise.

• Follow our guide to set up git for Data Science Exploration

Part 1c: Set up your Python notebook

In Data Science, all of our programming will be done in “notebooks”. Your python install will need a few libraries in order to run the notebooks. Using your command line, run the following:

conda install jupyter
conda install pandas
conda install matplotlib
conda install seaborn

This might take a couple of minutes. You will need to press [Enter] to confirm you want to install of of the packages (the option [y]/n shows that y is default when you choose no option).

You can check what has been installed already using the command:

conda list

Part 2: Complete the “lab_01” Notebook

Using your command line, navigate to your stat207 repository (cd Desktop -> cd stat207 -> cd NETID), replacing NETID with your own, and fetch the notebook from our release repository by running the following two git commands:

git fetch release
git merge release/lab_01 -m "Merging initial files"

ONLY IF you get an error related to unrelated histories, use:

git merge release/lab_01 --allow-unrelated-histories -m "Merging initial files" 

Open the notebook with the command:

jupyter notebook

Inside of the notebook webpage:

• Navigate into the folder containing lab_01.ipynb and open up the notebook
• Follow the instructions inside of the notebook

Whenever you are done, you should checkpoint (using File -> Save Checkpoint in the notebook) your notebook to save your work. Once your work is saved, you can exit the command line running the notebook with Ctrl + C.

Turning in Your Work

When you’re ready to save your work online and/or submit your work, return to the command line and run:

git add -A
git commit -m "submission (or any message here)"
git push origin master