Python Basics: Retrieving Online Data

Overview

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Python doesn't just represent numbers, but also text and other kinds of things. In technical terms, the parts of Python you'll learn are strings, lists, Booleans, errors, lists, and list manipulation. At a higher level you will learn how people use code to represent real-world ideas. In the process you'll use Python to automatically read Wikipedia and Spotify.

Syllabus

Your Chances of Becoming Famous Using Python

What do you think, is it easier to become famous than it used to be or harder? In this module, you will run code to automatically access thousands of pages on Wikipedia and calculate your probability of becoming famous over time. Let's get started!

Representing Ideas in Python

There is more to programming than reproducing your calculator. In this module, we learn how to play with text, numbers, true/false values in Python, all towards analyzing a popular pop song. We also learn how to handle error messages and ask for help.

Representing Collections in Python

Sometimes we deal with individual things in the world, sometimes collections of things. Python represents this idea with collections such as lists. We learn how Python lets us change, grow, access, and play with lists. We'll see how this is useful by reconstructing the Western history of the months of the year.

Course Summary & Honors: Interactive Demo

In the honor's section of this module, you will run code that accesses Spotify from Python. You have to jump through a few hoops to get it set up, but once it's running you can interact with virtually every aspect of Spotify via Python.