Data & Setup

TipWorkshop Attendees

If you are attending one of our workshops, we will provide a training environment with all of the required software and data.

The data and scripts can be downloaded below.

The idea behind this course however is to be able to use python yourselves on your local machines. We therefore recommend installing the software - Visual studio code, and mamba, using the instructions below.

Data

The data used in these materials is provided as a zip file. Download and unzip the folder to your Desktop to follow along with the materials.

Software

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a popular text editor with many useful extensions to make programming easier. You can use it with many different coding languages, one of which is python.

  • Go to the Visual Studio Code download page and download the installer for your operating system.
  • Double-click the downloaded file to install the software, accepting all the default options.
  • After completing the installation, search for “Visual Studio Code” and launch the application.
  • Go to “File > Preferences > Settings”, then select “Text Editor > Files” on the drop-down menu on the left. Scroll down to the section named “EOL” and choose “\n” (this will ensure that the files you edit on Windows are compatible with the Linux operating system). does not work because wsl.md does not resolve - copied from github software.
  • You can now close VS Code.
  • Determine the type of processor on your Mac. On the top-left of your toolbar click “ apple” > “About this Mac”.
    • If you see “Intel” on your processor/chip information, then you have an Intel processor.
    • If you see “M[1,2,3,4]”, then you have an M-series chip.
  • Go to the Visual Studio Code download page and download the correct installer based on the previous step.
  • Follow the installation instructions on the VS Code documentation page
  • Open a terminal and run the command uname -m. This will help you determine the installer you should download in the next step:
    • x86_64 = “x64”
    • aarch64 or arm64 = “ARM64”
    • armv7l or armhf = “ARM32”
  • Go to the Visual Studio Code download page and download the correct installer based on the previous step.
  • Install the software using your usual package manager.

mamba

We recommend that you manage your Python environment using the Mamba package manager. Below you can find links to our software installation instructions:

Once you follow those instructions, confirm you have an environment called pycourse. From your terminal run:

mamba env list

You should see an environment called pycourse on the list.

Finally, install some further packages we will use specifically on this course:

mamba install -n pycourse numpy