From brenda at moon.net.au Mon Sep 10 02:16:16 2012 From: brenda at moon.net.au (Brenda Moon) Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:16:16 +1000 Subject: [Canberra-PUG] MHV Arduino Beginners Workshops Message-ID: Hello, Although it isn't Python, I thought this might be of interest to people on this list: *** MHV Arduino Beginners Workshops *** A series of three beginner workshops to let you start interacting with the real world from your computer. Learn how to blink lights, measure the temperature, sound, light and movement and switches and dials. You don't need to have any programming or electronics experience to participate. We will provide all the expertise, support and friendly encouragement you will need to learn something new, and have fun with hardware. We want to have a diverse group of participants and are particularly encouraging women to attend. We will be providing a whole bunch of fun parts to play with such as sensors and lights, and during the workshop you can use them to make a wide variety of projects. The course includes your first month's Associate membership at MHV so that you can work at the space during the workshops and at other times it is open during the month (http://www.makehackvoid.com/community/membership). You do need to bring your own laptop (but please contact us if this isn't possible for you) and you will also need to bring your own Arduino, which is a small device that hooks up to your computer so you can play with loads of new toys. If you don't already have one, you can buy them online or get one from: http://australianrobotics.com.au/products/seeeduino-v30-atmega-328p (particpants can use the discount code mhv123). If you already have an Arduino clone, please contact us so we can see whether it'll do the job for this workshop :) When: Saturday 3pm to 6pm on: session 1: 13th October 2012 - getting started session 2: 20th October 2012 - making projects session 3: 3rd November 2012 - more projects! Cost (includes parts and MHV membership) $70 Regular $50 Concession (for full-time students, Seniors Card holders & pensioners) Places are limited, please RSVP by emailing brenda at moon.net.au. Payment will be required in advance so that we can get the kits for you. This workshop is being organised by MHV members Brenda Moon and Angus Gratton, with help from the MHV community. Please contact us if you have any questions about the workshops. regards, Brenda -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jamie at jre.id.au Tue Sep 18 05:27:12 2012 From: jamie at jre.id.au (Jamie Reid) Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:27:12 +1000 Subject: [Canberra-PUG] Python as a teaching language Message-ID: Hi! One of my friends is planning to teach programming to his year 8/9/10 students next year and is asking for some advice around which language to use first. He is exploring Python as an option and wanted some feedback from people who have used the language before (especially if there are any people who have used it to teach programming before!) Any thoughts/advice/comments would be greatly appreciated! Cheers, Jamie -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Ivan.Hanigan at anu.edu.au Tue Sep 18 06:36:43 2012 From: Ivan.Hanigan at anu.edu.au (Ivan Hanigan) Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:36:43 +0000 Subject: [Canberra-PUG] Python as a teaching language In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <42B97D505E15F94684EE3F434AC0FB0A10AB396B@UDSEXGH02.UDS.anu.edu.au> Hi, On a kind-of related topic, I would like to know more about how python is used for programming statistical data analyses. Obviously year 8/9/10 students don't get much further than normal linear regression but once you get beyond that you find that modern statistics is almost as much about programming as it is about probability and maths. Currently I use the R language because it is used extensively in statistics. However I keep hearing there is great potential for python to be used. Unfortunately I have only seen lukewarm reactions to python as a tool for frequentist and bayesian statistics, it seems like all the action is in machine learning and data mining (which I don't do). Is that a fair assessment? I'd love it if a demo could be arranged where someone with experience could show how python programming applies to the statistics domain. As an example of the kind of comparison I am after I have copied from this thread http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1595/python-as-a-statistics-workbench http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/16961 "R has a better syntax for data analysis. Consider the following basic example:" Python: results = sm.OLS(y, X).fit() R: results <- lm(y ~ x1 + x2 + x3, data=A) "What do you consider more expressive? In R, you can think in terms of variables, and can easily extend a model, to, say," lm(y ~ x1 + x2 + x3 + x2:x3, data=A) "Compared to R, Python is a low-level language for model building." Cheers, Ivan ________________________________ From: Canberra-PUG [canberra-pug-bounces+ivan.hanigan=anu.edu.au at python.org] on behalf of Jamie Reid [jamie at jre.id.au] Sent: 18 September 2012 13:27 To: canberra-pug at python.org Subject: [Canberra-PUG] Python as a teaching language Hi! One of my friends is planning to teach programming to his year 8/9/10 students next year and is asking for some advice around which language to use first. He is exploring Python as an option and wanted some feedback from people who have used the language before (especially if there are any people who have used it to teach programming before!) Any thoughts/advice/comments would be greatly appreciated! Cheers, Jamie -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ele.wil at gmail.com Wed Sep 19 17:44:24 2012 From: ele.wil at gmail.com (Elena Williams) Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 01:44:24 +1000 Subject: [Canberra-PUG] Canberra Python next week! 26th September Message-ID: Come on down give a talk or just meet other Python users! 5 minute, 20 minute or show-and-tell suggestions welcome here: http://wiki.python.org/moin/CanberraPUG Other details available here: http://www.meetup.com/Canberra-Python-Meetup-Group/events/83115992/ --- Elena :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ele.wil at gmail.com Mon Sep 24 09:39:21 2012 From: ele.wil at gmail.com (Elena Williams) Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:39:21 +1000 Subject: [Canberra-PUG] Canberra Python UG -- this Wednesday 26th! Message-ID: Hey everybody! Hope everyone is psyched, just a quick reminder that the group is meeting this Wednesday. 6pm for a 6.30pm start for talking at N101 at CSIT, ANU Usual format for talking then to the Wig and Pen. http://www.meetup.com/Canberra-Python-Meetup-Group/ If you're interested in talking about anything or have any questions bring them along: http://wiki.python.org/moin/CanberraPUG --- Elena :) On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 1:44 AM, Elena Williams wrote: > Come on down give a talk or just meet other Python users! > > 5 minute, 20 minute or show-and-tell suggestions welcome here: > http://wiki.python.org/moin/CanberraPUG > > Other details available here: > http://www.meetup.com/Canberra-Python-Meetup-Group/events/83115992/ > > --- > Elena :) > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: