The Carpentries teaches in-person workshops around the world on the foundational skills to work effectively and reproducibly with data and code. Our certified volunteer Instructors are trained in pedagogy and focus on creating a motivating and engaging environment for learners. Our workshops are inclusive and hands-on, empowering students to learn new skills and build confidence in using them in their work.
Carpentries training is sponsored by the University of Arkansas Libraries.
The Unix shell has been around longer than most of its users have been alive. It has survived so long because it’s a power tool that allows people to do complex things with just a few keystrokes. More importantly, it helps them combine existing programs in new ways and automate repetitive tasks so they aren’t typing the same things over and over again. Use of the shell is fundamental to using a wide range of other powerful tools and computing resources (including “high-performance computing” supercomputers). These lessons will start you on a path towards using these resources effectively.
Teams are not the only ones to benefit from version control: lone researchers can benefit immensely. Keeping a record of what was changed, when, and why is extremely useful for all researchers if they ever need to come back to the project later on (e.g., a year later, when memory has faded).
Version control is the lab notebook of the digital world: it’s what professionals use to keep track of what they’ve done and to collaborate with other people. Every large software development project relies on it, and most programmers use it for their small jobs as well. And it isn’t just for software: books, papers, small data sets, and anything that changes over time or needs to be shared can and should be stored in a version control system.
The best way to learn how to program is to do something useful, so this introduction to Python is built around a common scientific task: data analysis. While this is an introduction to Python, but its real purpose is to introduce the single most important idea in programming: how to solve problems by building functions. A goal is to teach people a little about the mechanics of manipulating data with lists and file I/O so that their functions can do things they actually care about.
For DART classes - the session will be divided into two parts.
The best way to learn how to program is to do something useful, so this introduction to R is built around a common scientific task: data analysis.
Our real goal isn’t to teach you R, but to teach you the basic concepts that all programming depends on. We use R in our lessons because:
OpenRefine is an open source tool for cleaning up messy data. It is similar to spreadsheet applications but it behaves more like a database. Formerly Google Refine, OpenRefine is a data cleaning software that helps you to get all of your data ready for analysis and ultimately visualization. Remember – all good data visualizations start with good, clean data!