[Canberra-PUG] Python as a teaching language

[Ivan Hanigan]

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
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