
Python Programming for the Humanities: An interactive tutorial - danso
http://fbkarsdorp.github.io/python-course/
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AdmiralAsshat
This reminds me of a project I started as a Religious Studies undergrad to try
to use Python for scriptural analysis by analyzing word frequency. I abandoned
it, however, after I tried running my program on several different
translations (i.e. KJV, NRSV, etc.) and would get wildly different results. I
realized that I couldn't rely on translations for accuracy and, being an
undergrad, had no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew to be able to rewrite the
program for the respective original languages.

It bummed me that I abandoned it, largely because I think there's a void for
CS-aided Humanities endeavors. I still consider myself a (mediocre) humanities
academic, rather than a (horrible) CS/IT worker. I'm happy to see this article
perhaps giving some hope to other majors that you don't need to go all-in on
Comp-Sci to be able to use it.

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ebiester
It goes deeper: the greek texts are divergent as well.

The work you proposed, believe it or not, has been done by hand (though I'm
sure it has been replaced by computers.) Concordances have been around since
1262, and the first (according to wikipedia) was an effort of 500 monks.

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singingfish
What's the formula for converting monks to cpu cycles?

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TheOtherHobbes
It depends on the denomination of the CPU.

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pistle
This was written as if it were an intro to Humanities applications of CS to a
math/CS academic. Not the other way round... was that intended?

If the target audience for this is someone from the humanities field with
little to no experience in programming languages and environments, the ramp in
this tutorial is very steep.

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mrspeaker
I agree... I've had a lot of absolute beginners ask me to "teach them to code"
and at with their experience level, installation instructions alone would be
enough to scare them off for good.

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steinsgate
It is definitely a step in the right direction. A friend of mine recently
tried teaching Python to a class of Neurology students and found that the
usual "find all prime numbers less than 100" approach did not work on them!
They didn't have the same aptitude for numbers and maths as a CS, Maths or
Physics students. The class found the whole exercise of programming
complicated and stressful. The same course had earlier been offered to Physics
students, who reported to have enjoyed it thoroughly. Given this, I think a
text manipulation based tutorial can work better for students who need to
learn programming and do not have good aptitude for math. Of course, some
amount of math has to be picked up in order to become a competent programmer,
but this exposure can come later for the not so math savvy students.

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kenbellows
Like @pistle, I'm a little confused about the intent of this notebook. This
doesn't seem super beginner friendly; if I was a complete beginner, especially
someone with a strictly humanities background and no CS experience, I imagine
I wouldn't be able to get past the first "quiz":

> In the code box below, write a simple program that calculates how many
> minutes there are in seven weeks.

How? We haven't talked about code at all yet! How do you expect me to know
what Python looks like enough to write that program?

Am I totally missing the point of this notebook?

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ericfrederich
Wasn't interactive for me. I'm running Chrome on Linux Mint. I cannot type
where it says "insert your code here"

~~~
vikp
It's interactive in the sense that if you download the notebooks you can work
through them with a local Jupyter installation.

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kenbellows
If this is intended for people new to Python, I expect they will also have no
idea what IPython or Jupyter is; there should probably be a blurb at the top
about how to use this notebook with a link to the appropriate "Here's how to
install IPython" page.

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omginternets
What kinds of problems are academics in the humanities trying to solve
computationally?

