DPI-691M: Programming and Data for Policymakers
Welcome to "Programming and Data for Policymakers." I'm Dhrumil Mehta, your course instructor. I'm looking forward to meeting and working with everyone in January. Since we only have a short time together in class, I have prepared some pre-work that can help us get a running start and get some logistics out of the way.
- Fill out the pre-course survey if you haven't already.
- Join the class Slack chat. You should recieve an invite in your email, if you haven't please let me know. Introduce yourself in the
#section-aor#section-bchannel. Include in your introduction a little bit about a policy area you’re interested in so that everyone can be thinking about forming project groups. I will be available on Slack at least a few times a week before the course to answer any questions you might have with the pre-work. - Do first five lessons of the CodeCademy Python Tutorial [Lesson 1-5]
- This may take a few hours to complete, so it will be best to get started sooner rather than later. Knowing programming is not a prerequisite for this course, but having experience with some of the basic concepts will help things move a little more smoothly. Please set aside some time to complete the first five lessons of this tutorial before coming to class. If you want a more thorough understanding, you can go beyond that. The quizzes at the end of the lessons are purely optional, I will not be looking at those.
- Following these tutorials will be especially important if you haven't written code before. We will be covering the concepts you need to know in class without assuming prior knowledge, but these exercises will help you build the muscle memory of writing code (not mis-spelling commands, closing brackets you open, being able to read pseudo-code) as well as some basic concepts (variables, lists, strings, logic). It will be easier to learn and use these concepts in class if you've encountered them before.
- Think about datasets. The project in this course will involve building a small website where you will visualize some data. Please be thinking of or exploring data in an area of your interest that you might be excited to use in your project. Please note that the project will be due on January 15, which means you may want to plan to spend January 13 and 14 to working with your group to finishing the project.
This course will require us to use a Unix shell which is included in the Linux and Mac operating systems. Since it can be hard to debug many different computers with different configurations, I ask that all Windows users please come with Ubuntu installed. There are a few different options for installing Ubuntu, please see the guide here: windows.md. If you're stuck, I've created a #windows-users channel in Slack where you can help one another get setup, or if you need me just ping @dhrumil and I'll try my best to help out as well.
The optional pre-readings for the course are on the topics of scrum and agile software development. During the course, we will discuss the benefits of agile and its adoption in delivering government services. We will also experiment with adopting some of the principles of "scrum", one of many agile and iterative software development strategies, to our learning over the course of the week of in-class instruction and into the project.
- SCRUM: A Breathtaking Brief and Agile Introduction - Chris Sims and Hillary Louise Johnson] [~20 minute read]
- The Agile Manifesto [~1 minute read]
- Elements of Scrum [full book] - This reading is very optional. I would recommend the first four chapters through "Agile Values and Principles". If you're interested in knowing more about scrum though, feel free to read on and learn through Google and/or Youtube videos.
The kindle editions of these books are cheaper and can be read electronically on your browser through the kindle cloud reader even if you don't own a kindle.