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Lessons / Part 7. Python, notebooks and the tools around them

33 Start in a hosted notebook and install nothing

The first session loads a CSV, describes it and plots one thing in a hosted notebook, with nothing installed on the laptop.

What people usually ask

How do I install Python so I can start analysing my data?

What comes back

A twenty step install guide covering the interpreter, an editor, a terminal and Git before a single number from the data is read.

Ask this instead

I have never used Python. Today I want to see my data load, with
nothing installed on this laptop. Give me a hosted notebook (Google
Colab) with these cells: 1, the install line for anything not
already there; 2, the upload of runs.csv; 3, load it with pandas and
print the shape and the first five rows; 4, describe() on the
numeric columns; 5, one scatter plot of yield against temperature
with axis labels and units. One cell per step, a comment line above
each saying what it does. Then one line on what is lost when the
session ends and where my uploaded file sits while it runs.

Attach: A small CSV of a few dozen runs with a header row.

Why it works: The first session shows the whole loop from upload to plot before any installing, and the last line says where the data went.

Drafted with Fable 5.1 from my notes; chosen and edited by me.