01 - 00 Introduction to Python

We mentioned the pros of using Python as our tool for performing urban science in the Introduction to Notebook and Beyond. In this introductory module we will discuss the basic semantics of the language and get our hands dirty by actually typing and executing the code blocks.

Remeber:

• To run a cell, you can press Shift+Enter (to execute and go to next cell) or Ctrl+Enter (to execute and stay on the same cell).
• To add an empty cell, press Esc to get out of edit mode and press either b key (to add it after the current cell) or a key (to add it before the current cell).
• You can make edits to the code and play around with it. However you cannot save the edits made to this notebook if you are running it on CDF.

Python has following 6 built-in Data-Types:

Type	Description	Example
int	Integer values	123
float	Floating point values	10.12
complex	Complex values	1 + 3j
bool	Boolean values	True
str	String values	“Hello”
NoneType	None value	None

and 4 Data-Structures

Type	Description	Example
list	Ordered collection of values	[1, ‘abc’, 3, 1]
set	Unordered collection of unique values	{1, ‘abc’, 3}
tuple	Immutable Ordered collection	(1, ‘abc’, 3)
dict	Unordered key. value pairs	{‘abc’: 1, ‘def’: 2}

In this section we will learn about the above Python’s built-in Data-Types and Data-Structures.