EML4930/EML6934: Lecture 01 - About

Python
Basics: data types, math, logic, if statement

Charles Jekel
August 31, 2017
Results from the first HW

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The operating systems used by the class

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Textbook for this lecture

A whirlwind Tour of Python by Dr. VanderPlas is a short book to prepare

users with the bare essentials for working with Python.
It is also available for free at http://www.oreilly.com/programming/
free/files/a-whirlwind-tour-of-python.pdf
or https://github.com/jakevdp/WhirlwindTourOfPython

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Comments

# This is a comment in Python

’’’
This is a bulk comment in python

Any line between the start and the end

is part of the comment

’’’

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Assigning variables

# Variables can be easily assigned

# this code assigns integer 10 to x
x = 10

This officially defines a pointer named x that points to the integer 10.
We can change what x points to at any time.

x = 10 # x is the integer 10
x = 10. # x is the floating point EEE-754 double precision
x = 10.0 # same as x = 10.
x = ’ten’ # x is now a string
x = (0,1,2) # x is now a tuple
x = [0,1,2] # x is now a list
x = 1; y = 2; z = 3 # assigns x = 1, y = 2, and z = 3

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Demo - Consequences of pointers

Be careful.

x = [1,2,3]
y = x
x[0] = 4
print(y)

Numpy warning!

import numpy as np
x = np.array([10])
y = x
x += 5
print(y)
# this doesn’t happen if I used x = x + 5
# this doesn’t happen if x = 10 (instead of np.array([10]))

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Math operators

Operater Name Description

a+b Addition Sum of a and b
a-b Subtraction Difference of a and b
a*b Multiplication Product of a and b
a/b True division Quotient of a and b
a // b Floor division Quotient of a and b , removing fractional parts
a%b Modulus Remainder after division of a by b
a ** b Exponentiation a raised to the power of b
-a Negation The negative of a
+a Unary plus a unchanged (rarely used)

Page 18 of A Whirlwind Tour of Python by VanderPlas.

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Division in Python2

Let’s take a look at division in Python2

a = 3
b = 2
c = a/b

So we have integer a divided by integer b and I’m familiar with

programming so I expect c to be an integer.

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Python3 broke division!

or Fixed it, because in Python3 an integer divided by an integer

magically becomes a float. Remember that import future command? We
can use it to get Python3 division in Python2.

from __future__ import division

a = 3
b = 2
c = a/b

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Built in data types

Here are the built in data types for Python. Use

type(x)
to display the data type of x.

Type Example Description

int x=1 Integers (i.e., whole numbers)
float x = 1.0 Floating-point numbers (i.e., real numbers)
complex x = 1 + 2j Complex numbers
bool x = True Boolean: True/False values
str x = ’abc’ String: characters or text
NoneType x = None Special object indicating nulls

str(x) converts x to a string int(x) converts x to an integer float(x)

converts x to a floating point
Page 24 of A Whirlwind Tour of Python by VanderPlas.
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Comparison operators

Comparison operators will return a boolean

True
False

Operation Description
a == b a equal to b
a != b a not equal to b
a<b a less than b
a>b a greater than b
a <= b a less than or equal to b
a >= b a greater than or equal to b

Page 21 of A Whirlwind Tour of Python by VanderPlas.

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Floating point precision

0.1+0.2 == 0.3

this returns False! Why?

You can use the numpy isclose function to set a tolerance for floating
point comparison.

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Data Structures

Type Name Example Description

list [1, 2, 3] Ordered collection
tuple (1, 2, 3) Immutable ordered collection
dict {’a’:1, ’b’:2, ’c’:3} Unordered (key,value) mapping
set {1, 2, 3} Unordered collection of unique values

Page 30-31 of A Whirlwind Tour of Python by VanderPlas.

Mutable
Can be changed and modified

Immutable
Can not be changed or modified

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Lists are amazing

Lists

• basic ordered and mutable data collections

• Lists can be any shape and contain any data type
• you can have lists, floats, integers, tuple, dictionaries, sets in lists
• a float of 10.0 can be added to a list x by x.append(10.0)
• list x can be sorted by x.sort()
• the number of items in list x can be found with len(x)

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Pimp my list

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Listception

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An example list

x = [] # initialize an empty list

x.append(0.0) # append float 0.0 to x
x.append(1) # append integer 1 to x
x.append([3,4,’hi’,(10,8)]) # append a list with a tuple to x
x.sort() # sort x from low to high
n = len(x) # count the number of items in list x
print(’There are ’,n,’ items in list x’)
print(x)

Note: x.sort() doesn’t work in this case with Python 3 since you would
need to compare different data types!!!

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List forward indexing - lists start at 0

x = [7, 77, 777, 7777]

The first item in the list can be called using

in : x[0]
out: 7
The second item of the list can be called using
in : x[1]
out: 77
The third item of the list can be called using
in : x[2]
out: 777
The last item of the list can be called using
in : x[3]
out: 7777
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List backward indexing - last index item in Python is -1

x = [7, 77, 777, 7777]

The last item in the list can be called using

in : x[-1]
out: 7777
The second to last item of the list can be called using
in : x[-2]
out: 777
The third to last item of the list can be called using
in : x[-3]
out: 77
The fourth to last item of the list can be called using
in : x[-4]
out: 7
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List slicing

x = [7, 77, 777, 7777]

List slicing is [startPoint : endPoint] where startPoint is inclusive and

endPoint is exclusive. In Mathematics would define define the interval as
[startPoint, endPoint).
If we wanted the first and second item in a list

in : x[0:2]
out: [7, 77]

So if we want the second through fourth item in list x

in : x[1:4]
out: [77, 777, 7777]

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Slicing with step size

x = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
16, 17, 18, 19] # creates a list of integers

We can slice with [startPoint:endPoint:stepSize], just like before, but now

stepSize is the step size of our slice.

in : x[0:20:2]
out: [0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18]

in : x[0:20:5]
out: [0, 5, 10, 15]

in : x[1:20:3]
out: [1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19]

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Reverse the order of a list

Sometimes it is useful to reverse the order of a list. We can do this by

consider a backwards slice.

x = [7, 77, 777, 7777]

So to see the reverse order of x we would run

in : x[::-1]
out: [7777, 777, 77, 7]

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Creating lists with range (Python2 only)

Note: Python 3.5 changed how range works, range no longer creates
lists, it is an iterable. We won’t use range for numerical work, we’ll use a
numpy function instead.
Let’s use the range function to create lists of integers. How do we view
the docstring of range?

print(range.__doc__)

range(stop) − > list of integers range(start, stop[, step]) − > list of

integers
Return a list containing an arithmetic progression of integers. range(i, j)
returns [i, i+1, i+2, ..., j-1]; start (!) defaults to 0. When step is given,
it specifies the increment (or decrement). For example, range(4) returns
[0, 1, 2, 3]. The end point is omitted! These are exactly the valid indices
for a list of 4 elements.
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Tuples

Tuples are just like lists, except you define a tuple with parentheses
instead of square brackets. List indexing a slicing of Tuples works exactly
like lists, and you’ll use square brackets to call items of a tuple.
Tuples are immutable which means that once they are created they
can’t be modified in any way. I hardly ever use Tuples.
Let’s create a tuple of 2, 4, 6.

x = (2, 4, 6)

in : x[0]
out: 2

in : x[-1]
out: 6

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Dictionaries

Dictionaries map keys to values. There is no index with dictionaries,

instead there is a key. Dictionaries are sometimes used to pass
parameters into a function.
Let’s take a look at this param dictionary for the XGDBoost library as an
example dictionary. http://xgboost.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
python/python_intro.html

param = {’max_depth’:2, ’eta’:1, ’silent’:1,

’objective’:’binary:logistic’ }
param[’nthread’] = 4
param[’eval_metric’] = ’auc’

We don’t can add keys to the dictionary at any time! Let’s take a look at
param.
in : print(param)
out: {’silent’: 1, ’eval_metric’: ’auc’, ’nthread’: 4,
’eta’: 1, ’objective’: ’binary:logistic’, ’max_depth’: 2} 25
Dictionaries - param continued

Find values of keys with square brackets.

in : param[’objective’]
out: ’binary:logistic’

We can easily assign a new value for a key

in : param[’objective’] = ’reg:linear’
in : print(param[’objective’])
out: ’reg:linear’

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Sets

Sets are like lists and tuples, but are defined with curly brackets. Sets
obey mathmatical set definitions. VanderPlas provides a good example
on page 36-37. Which I’ll show here.

in : primes = {2, 3, 5, 7}; odds = {1, 3, 5, 7, 9}

in : primes.union(odds) # union of primes and odds
out: {1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9}
in : primes.intersect(odds) # intersection of primes and odds
out: {3, 5, 7}
in : primes.difference(odds) # items in primes but not odds
out: {2}
in : primes.symmetric_difference(odds) # items in just one set
out: {1, 2, 9}

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Membership operator

Operator Description
a is b True if a and b are identical objects
a is not b True if a and b are not identical objects
a in b True if a is a member of b
a not in b True if a is not a member of b

Page 23 of A Whirlwind Tour of Python by VanderPlas.

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If-then statements

Let’s take a look at a if, elif, and else statement in Python.

x = 9
if x < 0:
print(x,’ is a negative number’)
elif x > 0:
print(x,’ is a positive number’)
elif x == 0:
print(’Single’)
else:
print(x,’ makes me confused!’)

This obviously returns (9, ’ is a positive number’)

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If-then statements - notes

x = 9
if x < 0:
print(x,’ is a negative number’)
elif x > 0:
print(x,’ is a positive number’)
elif x == 0:
print(’Single’)
else:
print(x,’ makes me confused!’)

• in Python code blocks are denoted by indentation

• remember the emphasis on Python is to create highly readable code
• by forcing you to indent your code block
• the recommendation is that you use four spaces to denote an indent
• but you can also use tab
• indentations are preceded by a :
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Subsequent code blocks are also indented

x = 9
if x > 0:
print(x,’ is a greater than zero’)
if x > 5:
print(x,’ is a greater than five’)
if x > 10:
print(x,’ is greater than 10’)
# this is the continued x > 0 code block
print(’the date type of x is ’, type(x))

Note that this will print the type of x only when x > 0!

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tabs vs spaces

In a survey it was found that those who use spaces make more money
https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/06/15/
developers-use-spaces-make-money-use-tabs/

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tabs vs spaces

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HW 01 - turn in one week from today in Canvas

Turn in the 5 questions as a single .py file onto canvas. Use comments to
clearly indicate which question you are working on. Your filename should
end as py2.py if you use Python2 and py3.py if you use Python3.
1. Name one difference between Python2 and Python3. Print your
answer as a string in Python.
2. You are given a list x = [0,1,2,3,4,5,6]. Print the third item in list x.
3. Assign y as the reversed order of list x. Print y.
4. Use list slicing to assign z [1,3,5] from x. Print z.
5. Your friend is new to Python. He is confused why his if statement
isn’t working, he has a number x and wants to print ’x is positive’ by
checking with an if statement. His code is following.
x = 99
if (x > 0) is True
print(’x is positive’)
This returns an ’invalid syntax error’. Copy this code into your .py
file, and correct the code.
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