Started Learning Python

A quick note about yesterday’s post: I wanted to add something that I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post. At the end, I mentioned that there were a few things I wanted to add to the analysis. One was to add each state’s lockdown/shutdown/stay-at-home order date and the projected re-opening date. Another thing I wanted to add was each state’s population so I could do a per capita analysis (maybe per 100,000). That kind of analysis would take into account population discrepancies between New York and Louisiana, for example.

A while ago I mentioned I was reading three books and one of them was Algorithms for Dummies. I had a bit of a concern with this book because the book mentioned that Microsoft’s Windows 10 created problems with downloading Anaconda/Python IDE (integrated development environment). I was a bit bummed out about that and feared pursuing further because I didn’t want to mess up my machine. But then, I noted that the book was published in 2017, and I thought, “Surely, Microsoft has fixed this problem by now.” I did further research and it looked like the issue had been fixed.

So, after much hesitation, I downloaded the Anaconda/Python and have started playing around with it. I have begun learning Python.

The point of reading this book was not to just learn Python (although it would be a great side benefit) but to learn the thinking concepts behind some of the algorithms. For example, in search, you can do a “divide and conquer” concept. An example of this concept is a program for searching (one of many variations) that works only if the data is sorted, but once sorted, you can then divide the table in half, say into Table A and Table B. Now, if you are searching for item Z, you would see if item Z is less than the last item in Table A, and if so, you can take Table A and divide it into 2. If Z is not less than the last item, then you can take Table B and divide it. Then you proceed iteratively from there with multiple halving of tables until your search ends.

I’m hoping the concepts are what I’ll get out of the book.

One thing I want to do later, if not real soon, is learn the concepts first in Python and then see if I can create the same kind of program in VBA. This recreation might be a good way of understanding the concept better.

The other thing I want to do is get a book with a couple of Python projects or programs. I saw a book that offers programs to work with Excel, so I might get that book as well as the one with fun Python projects. I think with those two books, I might learn enough Python to get started, and combined with googling, to pursue solutions to some projects. Python will be another tool in my toolkit.

One thing I do want to point out: the link in the book to download the Anaconda didn’t work – probably because it is 3 years later since the book was published. What I did was search for “free Anaconda download” and found the Anaconda site. There is a free version there to be downloaded. The book does not offer much on how to use Anaconda other than using the Anaconda prompt which leads you to a command line (via iPython) to write your code and get immediate feedback on your code. This is a line by line programming. The book also mentioned Jupyter Notebook but didn’t go into it with any kind of detail. You’ll have to explore Jupyter to see how it works. The Jupyter Notebook is great for writing up your program, much like the VBA editor, but I’m still don’t know how a large set of data would work with the program. How would you get a large set of data within the Jupyter Notebook or interact with your program? The book has left out a lot of details, but I’m in the early stages of reading the book, so maybe later on I will learn more about how to actually get the program to interact with the data.